*Some Must Watch, by Ethel Lina White

World Publishing Company
Forum Books Motion Picture Edition, 1946
256 pp
originally published as Some Must Watch, 1933

hardcover

This book was so much fun to read and it hit all of my classic mystery reading buttons --  an isolated family home, a murderer on the prowl and all of it set against the proverbial dark and stormy night, complete with banging shutters and an elderly bedridden woman predicting doom and gloom.  How could it possibly be any better???

Ethel Lina White (1876-1944) was a prolific novelist, with a 17-book career starting in 1927 with The Wish-Bone.  Some Must Watch is her sixth novel, and it's a good one.  I'm almost sorry I didn't wait for the proverbial dark and stormy night to read it since it would have been the perfect backdrop for this book.  The action here takes place over the course of one stormy night, set in a family home called The Summit  "on the border-line between England and Wales."  It's  twelve miles away from the nearest village, and twenty-two miles from the nearest town; a "three-storied house, with two staircases..."  As one might imagine, the Warren family has trouble finding or keeping domestic help, since no one really wants to live in such an isolated place.  That's not the case with Helen Capel, though -- she seriously needs a job after "some months of enforced leisure" and employment suits her just fine. And unlike some characters in  Victorian novels,  she's not there hoping for a "potential husband" -- she plans to keep investing in Savings Certificates, since as she says, "she believed in God -- but not in Jane Eyre." Helen is joined by Mr. and Mrs. Oates, the couple who help to keep things running at the Summit, as well as the Warren family: Professor Sebastian Warren, his sister Blanche who doubles as housekeeper, the Professor's son Newton and his wife Simone, and the Professor's elderly but feisty mother Lady Warren.  As we discover about her,

"The household was waiting for her to die, but she still called the tune. Every morning, Death knocked politely on the door of the blue room; and Lady Warren saluted him in her customary fashion, with her thumb to her nose."

Also in attendance on this particular night is Stephen Rice, who's come for help from the Professor as he prepares for a civil service job, and last but not least, Nurse Barker (whose last name as it turns out, is quite appropriate), who has been hired to help take care of Lady Warren.

The opening of this novel is very well done, setting the tone and the atmosphere for what's to come.   Helen is just returning from a long walk as day is about to slip into night. She still has some way to go before reaching the house, and while she's making her way back through the dense grove that sits between her and the Summit, murder is on her mind.  Four of them, to be precise -- "credibly the work of some maniac, whose chosen victims were girls." The murders started out in the town, moved to the village, and the last victim had been killed in another "lonely country-house, within a five-mile radius" of the Warren home.  In short, the killer is getting closer and much more bold, moving from a "street murder" to actually going inside a house to make his move. Thinking about these murders spooks Helen to no end, and as she comes closer to her goal, she actually believes she sees one of the trees move.  Feeling relief as she enters into safety once again, it isn't long before the house is thrown into upset: the doctor taking care of Lady Warren announces that another murder has just occurred, this one committed very, very close to home.  The Professor puts the house on lockdown -- no one in and no one out.  But the night is only just beginning ....

And right now I so want to do that evil villain laugh, the  "muah-hah-hah-hah-hah" reminiscent of the old Shadow radio show opening because this is just that type of book.  And while I thought it was clever and well paced, with ratcheting tension that continues throughout the night making me flip pages in a frenzy, I see that some readers weren't so crazy about it.  Well, it sort of goes with Ethel Lina White territory that there are a lot of psychological observations from the characters in her work, so here the talky parts didn't bother me at all. Personally, I think the dynamics among the characters are just as much a part of this story as the mystery, so I quite enjoyed it. And the thing is that when it comes to the film, all of that is missing, which is really a shame.

In fact, I have no idea why the powers that be who made this film changed it as much as they did because to me it really was a letdown after having read the novel.  First of all, they took Helen's character (played by Dorothy McGuire) and made her unable to speak and I still haven't figured that one out.  Second, there is very little quality interaction among characters, since they've stripped the whole thing down to the point where there are only a handful of people involved; the nurse's role between book and film is pretty much left out entirely.  Not only that, but for me, there was way more suspense and tension in the novel than the movie gave off, to the point where not too far into the movie Mr. Film Critic guessed who the killer was, something he never does and something  I didn't do while reading the book.  So if you've only seen the film, you're missing out on so much more.

If anyone can come up with a cool design for Ethel Lina White fan club t-shirts, let me know. I'm really starting to appreciate and enjoy her work with every book of hers I read.  Some Must Watch is definitely another boo-yah! read for me. I only wish the weather had been bad so I could have crawled under the covers spooked out by thunder and lightning while reading it.

from the British reading room: Murder Underground, by Mavis Doriel Hay

97807122357258
British Library Crime Classics, 2014
originally published 1934
286 pp

paperback

"The annals of murder are riddled with coincidence."

Between 1934 and 1936 British author Mavis Doriel Hay (1874-1979)  published three mystery novels, with Murder Underground as her first, followed by Death on the Cherwell in 1935 and The Santa Klaus Murders in 1936.   This is my first book by Hay, and while I found it a bit underwhelming, it certainly won't be my last.

Miss Euphemia Pongleton has been murdered, strangled with her dog's leash and left on the stairs going down to the Belsize Park underground station. There is a man in custody for her death, but no one at the Frampton Private Hotel (the boarding house where Miss Pongleton lived) can believe he actually committed the crime.  In fact, the denizens of the house have much more sympathy for the accused than they do for the dead woman, who was rather eccentric, cheap, rather "tiresome," and known to have "loved a sense of power."  While the police are called in to investigate, in this book the Inspector in charge has only a minor role, arriving late to the story.  The focus is really on the efforts of the people at the Frampton who try to discover who really killed her. In the meantime, someone else has his own reasons for wanting to conceal what he knows, and ends up causing more than a lot of confusion in the case.

Considering how very much I love these old books and British murder mysteries in general, overall this one was, like Miss Euphemia Pongleton, a bit tiresome.  What I enjoyed about it was the focus on the boarders, who have their own theories on what happened.  The best scene takes place at the beginning of the story, when all are together in one room, waiting to be called individually to talk to the (somewhat invisible at this point) police Inspector. There we discover that while these people feel sorry that she'd met with such a terrible end, they're also realistic, with one woman noting that

"It would be hypocritical to pretend that any one of us is overwhelmed at the removal of Miss Pongleton."

This conversation is very lively, with a novelist, Mrs. Daymer, applying her "expert" knowledge of the police, of investigations, and of the victim herself while "surveying the possibilities of the situation." The other boarders voice their own opinions or come up with logical questions that are discussed in turn, each one speculating on motive, means and opportunity.    But when outside of the boarding house, someone decides to gum up the works to protect himself and starts covering up his own movements and  telling a series of lies, the story quickly gets tedious, making the novel  tough to get through.  Talk talk talk, very little in the way of action until the book is nearly finished.   I read several reader reviews where people had said that they got bored enough to flip to the end, but really, it's so incredibly easy to figure out that no one should have had to do that.  For me the question was one of waiting it out to see how long it took before things are set right, and exactly how that was going to be accomplished.

While I won't sing the praises of this novel, I do still plan on reading her other two, so maybe they'll be a bit better.  However, as an example of the work of a previously-obscure woman mystery writer of the Golden Age, Murder Underground is very much worth reading.

Disappearance at Devil's Rock, by Paul Tremblay

9780062363268
Wm. Morrow, 2016
327 pp

arc: my thanks to the publisher, and 
my thanks to the powers that be at TLC Book Tours

 Let's just get this out of the way up front -- I am not a huge fan of what I call  "teencentric" novels so I didn't love this book. However, to be very fair, it turns out when all is said and done to be quite suspenseful, atmospheric and incredibly sad all at the same time. Aside from the elements of  mystery and suspense,  it also reflects the emotional devastation of a family suffering from a terrible loss and what they do to cope.  

Just to add a bit to the back-cover blurb:

 There is much truth in the statement "No good news ever calls after midnight," and in this case, the news is beyond bad. It seems that Elizabeth Sanderson's son Tommy, age 13, has gone missing. He'd been staying overnight at the home of Josh Griffin, one of his two best friends, but now he's simply vanished into the woods of Borderland, a park whose edges are very close to Josh's home. Along with their friend Luis, they'd taken their bikes to the park a number of times, hanging out at Split Rock aka Devil's Rock, doing typical boy stuff -- joking around, fantasizing about zombies, talking about the Minecraft world they'd created, etc. --  just regular things that signal nothing out of the ordinary for these kids.  A search is launched based on what Josh and Luis (the third member of this trio of friends) reveal about that night, but as time moves on the case drags with no results.  Elizabeth, of course, is devastated, along with her young daughter Kate and her mother, riddled with guilt and missing Tommy enough to where she begins to actually imagine his presence in their home.   At this juncture, this would seem to be an ordinary story of a child's disappearance, but then the author does something very cool here, introducing some really weird, questionable things that start to happen, ratcheting up the tension bit by bit.  Taken together, these events begin to call into question not only the other boys' version of events of the night of Tommy's disappearance at Devil's Rock, but to Elizabeth's surprise, they also reveal something about Tommy's state of mind about the earlier loss of his father.  That's all I'm willing to divulge because what happens until we get to the truth of things is so bizarre and so strange that telling would certainly wreck things.

Disappearance at Devil's Rock will definitely be one to throw in a beach bag -- a good summer read.  It's a slow burner of a story where the action sort of happens in waves. In between the  events that take place at Elizabeth's house, in between Elizabeth's grieving and trying to hold things together for her family,  we are made privy via flashbacks  to little bits and pieces of the days leading up to Tommy's disappearance.  This is a good move, and I like this sort of piecemeal approach to the truth, because really, it tends to raise a lot of questions in my mind.  Including the bit about the Fox News commentators (and social media) was also a good move, because as everyone knows, ignorant people pointing fingers instead of offering anything in the way of sympathy or help is what news media and internet trolls are good at, and sadly they are a part of everyday life these days. Really, there are a number of good moments here, but then there are also places where I had issues.  For example, sometimes the boys' conversations got old and repetitive to the point of sheer boredom. I was so sick of the word "hardo" after a while -- I get that the author is writing teen boys here, but less would have been so much more.  I also didn't care for the way he wrote Kate -- the spunky little sister bit didn't quite work for me.   And, after certain revelations about the strange occurrences in the family home, the story sort of dragged along until the last part of the novel when boom - things pick up in a big hurry at which point everything pops to end in a good and satisfying way.  So the bottom line is that  I have mixed feelings about this one. I'm probably the fish swimming upstream again because this novel is getting uber-rave reviews.  I'll just say that while I found it a bit flawed writingwise  and too much on the edge of becoming a YA novel for my taste, at its core there is a good, suspenseful and tragic mystery here.

*****

My many thanks to Trish at TLC Book Tours for the opportunity to read this book.  

On a Desert Shore: A Regency Mystery, by S.K. Rizzolo

9781464205453
Mysterious Press, 2016
269 pp

hardcover, so very thoughtfully and kindly sent to me by the author and by her publisher.  Thank you!

I have never in real life met S.K. Rizzolo, but she is a member of a group I belong to on goodreads.  I had heard of her work, of course, but when I spoke to someone named "SK" for the first time in the group, I had absolutely no idea that that "SK" was the author S.K. Rizzolo.  Then at some point the light bulb over my head flashed on and I put two and two together.  So, when she emailed some months back and said she had x amount of copies of this book, her latest in this series, to give away at her discretion and asked if I would like one, I was beyond honored.

It's true that I don't normally find myself reading crime novels with a romantic edge to them; au contraire, I seem to be on a steady diet of dark, no-frills, edgy, psychological, existentialist-bent, noirish, largely obscure and downright gritty, no-holds barred  (but always well written!) crime fiction.  So, after having read several of these for a while, after having finished some even darker books that I've posted about on my oddly weird fiction page and some even more horrific (because they're true) nonfiction books, I figured it was time to give the old, tired, and probably by-now warped brain a rest. What better way than to relax with some light historical crime fiction?  As I was looking forward to a restorative,  ahhhh-this-is-going-to-be-just-what-the-doctor-ordered kind of novel,  -- surprise! It turns out that Ms. Rizzolo isn't all sunshine and light:  On a Desert Shore picks up some definite Gothic tones,  there is an horrific crime at the heart of this book, and if that's not enough, there is also the issue of slavery that she weaves most deftly into her tale.

In a nutshell, and just to whet appetites, this novel begins in Jamaica in 1796, with a very ill Lt. John Chase of the Royal Navy coming out of his feverish delirium.  He had been nursed through the illness that had killed a number of others by a slave named Joanna, leaving him extremely grateful to her for saving his life.  Chase eventually goes back to work for the navy, but suffers a sidelining injury. Once again recuperating, this time in Naples, he returns to England where he is offered work in Bow Street, to "stick a plug here and there in the crime that flowed through the city."  Now, flash forward to 1813 -- Chase has been offered a job looking after the daughter of a very wealthy English merchant, Hugo Garrod, in the face of some strange events that have been occurring at their home.   Hugo is also the owner of a Caribbean plantation where, unfortunately, slavery still exists. His daughter, in fact, was born to a slave mother, who turns out to be the very same Joanna who helped Chase pull through his near-fatal illness.  Because Chase was never able to thank Joanna, and has always felt a great deal of gratitude toward her, he agrees to take the job.  However, before he can get to the root of  the strange happenings surrounding Marina Goddard, there is a fatal poisoning at the Goddard home.  As the evidence begins to mount, Chase and his friends begin to realize that it all points toward the lovely Marina, but all of them are positive that she has played no part in the tragedy.  Chase and the others find themselves working against time and against the cascading tide of events to prove her innocence before she faces a terrible fate.

Yes, there are a few sweetish sort of romantic spots in this book, but seriously, to her credit unlike many authors I've read, this one keeps them to a minimum; no bodice ripping here.  The story focuses way more on the crime, on the characters, on London itself, and then there's the issue of slavery.  Despite  having never read any of the books in the series that come before this one, I became quite attached to the characters in this book -- all of them flawed with sad or unique circumstances to overcome, making me wish I'd read the other novels.  My personal favorite: Marina Garrod, whose Jamaican roots  come back to haunt her, who had been brought to London by her father to give her a good life in a free country and to be raised among other young women of her class and status. She reminded me so much of another woman I'd read about from the same sort of circumstances,  the very real  Dido Belle, who had much the same sort of experience in her time. Despite the fact that the slave trade in the British colonies had been officially abolished in 1807, slavery still existed there, and there's a wonderful scene in this book that brings home  how some of the products (in this case, sugar) used in the Garrod household continued to be slave produced.  Then there's the Gothic aspect of this book -- I could tell by reading that the author absolutely must be a huge fan of the genre, especially toward the end, when it reminded me so very much of events in Wilkie Collins' Woman in White.  I couldn't help myself -- my heart was pounding hoping the heroine would be rescued in time, just as I do when I'm engaged in any Gothic novel. There's also the incorporation of the exotic -- obeah -- that I just loved.   I want to say that some of the writing also brought back mental flashes of old books my mom used to read and had laying around the house by Phyllis A. Whitney and Victoria Holt, stuff I just devoured as a preteen kid. That was a happy memory -- thanks!

It may be a long while before I read something like this again, but I had a great time with this book. And, as it turned out, it was exactly what the doctor ordered. 

*Detour, by Martin M. Goldsmith

9781617209321
Black Curtain Press, 2013
(originally published 1939)
145 pp

paperback

"...like the lions and the spiders and the snakes, the female human is more vicious than the male..."
                                             -- (103)

Toward the end of this book we find the main character musing  about how great things would be if "our lives could be arranged like a movie plot," and how MGM does a "much better job of running humanity than God." As he says, "Things are plotted in straight lines," and

"There are never any unexpected happenings which change everything about the hero but his underwear." 

In this book, though, Alex Roth finds his life turned upside down precisely due to a number of "unexpected happenings" that detour him away from his dream of a decent life with the woman he loves.  Detour is a compelling, dark novel and the film based on this book is also really good, considering that it was made on a shoestring budget and took only a few days to make.

Briefly, Alex Roth is thumbing his way across the US from New York to Los Angeles to reunite with his singer girlfriend Sue Harvey. Although Roth had worked hard training to be a classical violinist, he ends up instead in a club in New York city playing with a band.  That gig ended one night when a customer decided to make a pass at Sue and decided to "pat her fanny," causing Alex to see red. It also caused him to lose his job. A month later, just days before Sue and Alex had planned to be married, Sue decides to hotfoot it to Hollywood to take her chances.  Alex, down to his last fourteen dollars, is sort of stuck there, but eventually he too decides to head west to see Sue and to try his own luck in the movies, a la "Heifetz or Kreisler."  So off he goes, and makes it as far as Texas before the money runs out. There he does a "Jean Valjean," stealing food and in turn ends up in jail for a month.  Back on the road once more, Alex is somewhere on Highway 70 in New Mexico when a car stops to pick him up, and it's then that, as he informs us, we have "reached the part where all the mess begins."

And oh, what a mess it is!  Alex's immediate problem is bad enough and great fodder for noir novels, but once he reaches California (alone, but I won't say why), things spiral out of control when he runs into one of noir fiction's most evil femme fatales, Vera.  In one of the best lines in this novel, Alex describes her as being  "like a frozen stick of dynamite; you never knew when she was going to blow," a perfectly, spot-on accurate characterization.   She knows something that puts Alex completely in her power, and the reader spends quite a bit of time in Vera's dark, claustrophobic existence.   But Alex's story is only part of this novel, since Sue's story takes up part of this book as well, the two narratives alternating throughout the book.   Considering how much Alex loves her,  Sue's story, especially her feelings toward Alex,  comes as quite a surprise -- and also allows her to take on the role of femme fatale in her own right. Sue even admits it, noting that she's

"recognized myself to be a weapon, every bit as formidable as a knife or a gun, and liable to do untold damage unless kept in check." 

Between Sue and Vera, the darkness and the snares close in quickly around the men in their lives and just doesn't let up.  Not for one minute.

So we have deadly women, life's plans taking a huge detour for pretty much all of the main characters in this novel, and an overwhelming fatalistic atmosphere all combining here to make for an incredible book, which in my opinion definitely falls squarely into the noir camp.  As I'm fond of saying, it's one of those books that reminds me of watching a train wreck, where you just know beyond a shadow of a doubt that something terrible's going to happen, but you just can't take your eyes away from what's coming. Considering the short length of this story, it grabbed hold of me and wouldn't let go. I have to say though, that in real life,  the odds would have to be pretty much astronomical in terms of Vera's first meeting with Alex and the threat she's holding over Alex's head, but then again, coincidence, fate, whatever you call it,  is a huge part of the story, I think in this novel.  I think Alex's film counterpart says it best when he notes that "That's life. Whichever way you turn, Fate sticks out a foot to trip you." 

Tom Neal, Ann Savage in the 1945 movie

And now to the film, which I really enjoyed, by the way. Reviews are available everywhere you turn, so I won't go into it, except to say that between book and movie, Sue's narrative somehow doesn't make it onto film, leaving the renamed Alex (now Al Roberts) and Vera in the main frame.  For movie purposes, though,  it works and works well.  The opening sequence is just dynamite -- with Al in a roadside diner somewhere looking scraggy as they come and holding on to his cup of coffee.  The music starts on the juke box and it just happens to have been Al & Sue's song, which sends Al deep into his memory, letting us know exactly how he's come to be where and who he is at the moment. And it just gets better from there. I know there's another later version, but I think I'm going to give it a miss since this one was just so good.

Once again a yes/yes book/movie. More importantly though, I'm having so much fun with this page-to-screen thing -- reading books and watching movies I might not have picked up otherwise.  So it's a win/win for me too.  And while I get that not everyone shares my enthusiasm for old novels from seventy-plus years ago, I just love this stuff, and above all I've been noticing that there are some things that come down from generation to generation without much change.

a little belladonna with your bovril broth? The Deadly Dowager, by Edwin Greenwood

9781943910380
Valancourt Books, 2016
(originally published 1934)
233 pp

paperback

"There's only one thing that matters, ... and that is the Family."

So sayeth the grande dame Arabella, Lady Engleton of the de Birketts, a family whose "fortune -- or misfortune" came into being with a reward from none other than Thomas Cromwell during the reign of Henry VIII.  Flash forward a few centuries, and meet the entire de Birkett clan, and do it quickly before something terrible happens to them.

Arabella, now 83,  has for the last 65 years of her life devoted her energies to restoring the de Birkett's fallen fortunes, with very little in the way of results.  She's pinned her hopes on her young grandson Henry, age 20, whose mother died when he was three, and who's been in Arabella's care ever since.  Her goal is to

"somehow set the Family on its feet again, enable Henry to wear his coronet in the House of Lords and look his peers in the eye without the stigma of poverty hanging round his head like some disreputable halo."

So, as the novel opens, Arabella seems to have hit on a marvelous scheme for ensuring that Henry will be well provided for and that the de Birketts will continue to maintain their place among their noble peers.  She has called a "Family conclave," bringing anyone connected by blood or marriage (however tenuous that connection may be in some cases) together at their home in Mount Street, London.  Her idea: to insure all of their lives up to twenty thousand pounds. That way, when the policies mature, young Lord Henry should find himself with well over forty thousand pounds to "sustain his position in the world and his dignity in the House of Lords."  God help anyone who doesn't agree, like poor old Uncle Alfred, who is "leaving his little bit to charities," because death has a funny way of making an appearance -- along with a new will leaving it all to Henry.    And the body count begins to rise, slowly but surely. I mean, seriously -- they all should have figured out that this was just a very bad idea.

One would think that the "deadly dowager" would be happy at this juncture, but no, that's not quite all that is up her sleeve.  While young Henry's fortune is being planned (and, if you'll pardon me,  executed), Arabella has other plans for her young grandson that involve marrying into a wealthy family to better secure the de Birkett position and lineage. The problem is that Henry's already in love with Dora, and well, to the Lady Engleton, his choice is simply not acceptable.

So now people may be thinking "oh great. You've just wrecked the whole plot, the whole storyline, the whole book, in fact," but the truth is that I  haven't given away any more than the back-jacket blurb reveals. The fun is actually in waiting to see what our dear, deadly Arabella is going to do next, as well as the truly ingenious characters in her orbit.   As Mark Valentine has written in his introduction to this novel,

 "Greenwood took care to provide an (as it were) full-bodied supporting cast" 

aside from "the book's eponymous assassin," and the resulting ensemble makes for great fun, as does the lovely satire on class in 1930s England.  There is also budding romance here which normally I don't care for, but here it works and is another reason for all of the out-loud chuckles coming from me that kept coming the entire time I was reading this book.  There is a great one liner from the New York Times contemporary review of this novel that pretty well sums it all up:

"Quite the jolliest crime story that has come our way in many moons."

I know murder isn't supposed to be funny, but well, sometimes it's just refreshing that way.

While the 1930s may not be everyone's favorite period for crime reading, The Deadly Dowager was just plain absolutely delightful -- farcical, yes, in its own way, but I defy anyone to read this and not laugh at some point during this novel. Crime light, indeed -- a perfect summer read to toss in the beach bag, lay back and totally enjoy.  I just loved it.

*" I was born lonely, I guess" -- Dark Passage, by David Goodis

 9781853753091

Prion Books, 1999 (part of the Film Ink series)

(originally published 1946)

244 pp

paperback

"There's no such thing as courage... There's only fear. A fear of getting hurt and a fear of dying." 

David Goodis has been called "the poet of the losers," and after having read two of his novels now, it seems an appropriate moniker.  Dark Passage is his second novel, after Retreat From Oblivion (1939), followed by another sixteen before his death in 1967.  Sadly, by then, his novels (according to Andrew Nette at the LA Review of Books,)  were out of print in the US, and he had been "almost completely forgotten" among American readers.  Luckily,  sometime back in the 1980s, Vintage Black Lizard Crime started republishing his work, making his books widely available once more to the American reading public.  

The novel begins with one of the best opening paragraphs ever:

"It was a tough break. Parry was innocent. On top of that he was a decent sort of guy who never bothered people and wanted to lead a quiet life. But there was too much on the other side and on his side of it there was practically nothing. The jury decided he was guilty. The judge handed him a life sentence and he was taken to San Quentin."

But going to San Quentin wasn't Vincent Parry's only tough break in life.  He had been an orphan, and having been rejected by his only relative in Arizona, his hunger finally led him to rob a general store. By fifteen he was doing time at a reform school where he'd been beaten by a guard; after trying to defend himself, Parry found himself doing a stint in solitary.  His marriage to his wife Gert was also less than perfect, starting with his honeymoon and growing worse over the sixteen months they'd been together.  Now she's dead, he's been wrongfully convicted of her murder, and yet even as he went through the prison gates he was thinking that

 "he might be able to extract some ounce of happiness out of prison. He had always wanted happiness, the simple and ordinary kind. He had never wanted trouble."

But the meager amount of happiness he's managed to carve out for himself in prison is wrecked when history repeats itself and he's once again beaten by a brutal guard and must defend himself.  Facing the fact that prison "was going to be a horrible life," Parry plans and executes a daring escape, and it's at this juncture where the story really begins -- as fate intervenes in the form of young Irene Janney, who, for her own reasons,  had followed his trial and is now willing to go to great risk helping him out after his escape.  What follows is some of the darkest noir ever written, where despite Parry's chance at a new life, the tough breaks continue to follow him.

Parry wants very much to clear his name, and in his isolated and lonely life he has a sincere and desperate need to find someone in whom he can trust. But Parry's world is one where betrayal has become part and parcel of who he is, and Goodis brings this out so beautifully when he's inside of Parry's head, revealing the paranoia that threatens to consume him. Dark Passage is a masterful and solid piece of writing, a book where plot is definitely secondary to Goodis' skill as an author. I could go on and on and on about this book but well, on to the next.

So, now to the film, and I have to say that this is one of the few adaptations of a novel I've read that I actually enjoyed. It's done so skillfully and so very cleverly from the beginning, where we don't see Vincent Parry's face but rather only the faces of the people talking to him, so it's all from his perspective, a technique I've learned since that is known as a subjective point of view.  This approach only changes after Vincent has plastic surgery; one of the masterstrokes of this film are the occasional  glimpses we get of Vince Parry's face in the newspaper which, of course, is not Humphrey Bogart's. While some people have criticized this approach, personally, I thought it was a good way to do it; I found it quite innovative. Then again, I knew the story so I totally understood the decision to it that way. Someone walking into it without knowing what's coming might feel differently, but hey - to each his/her own. I will say that it threw me off for about thirty seconds before I did the inner "ah."  With a few differences, the movie adheres to the novel quite nicely for the most part, although for sure it lacks Goodis' great touch of Parry's inner monologues brought on by his paranoia, something that would definitely be tough to get across on a screen.  It also doesn't really get into the backstory of Madge (played by Agnes Moorehead), who is a very important character here and whose part in Parry's story should have got more airtime.  But overall, I was pretty much glued to the movie. Anyone reading any of my previous *-marked page-to-screen posts will know that most adaptations I've watched just haven't gone over well for me, but this one certainly did.  It also reminded me of how much I love watching Lauren Bacall.

Bottom line: both book and movie are definite don't-miss material. Loved the novel, liked the movie and would seriously recommend both.