Black Wings Has My Angel by Elliott Chaze

 

Sort of a high-class, grad school version of Jim Thompson.  The shell-shocked veteran turned criminal teams up with the femme fatale to hatched an armored car robbery, using an abandoned mine shaft as the perfect getaway/hideaway where they can also bury the evidence.

Prose style strong, at times a litttle too self-conscious and minute for my taste. But I'd recommend the book to fans of noir crime fiction.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

“In my experience, the people who worry about losing their edge, often they fail to see they already lost the blade along time ago.”

My second attempt at reading this. Bought it when it came out in 2009 and got to page 292.  My dim memory is that I was floundering in the sea of Yiddish terms and also, #2, it weren't no Kavalier and Klay.

Loved it this time around. Thick book -- Chabon really lays it on thick with sense description, and it starts to slow things down halfway through, and take some steam out of the engine of a great noir whodunit -- but Chabon's writing in and of itself is such a great wallowing pleasure, he's always trying to please, and I love the book for that.

Nobody Move by Denis Johnson

Awesome genre exercise.  Little Raymond Chandler, little Larry McMurtry, little Elmore Leonard.  Loved it.

Dublin Noir: The Celtic Tiger Vs. The Ugly American, edited by Ken Bruen

A Tan and Sandy Silence by John D. MacDonald

What a terrific story.  My first JDM, after a lifetime spent mentally scoffing my father's adoration of Travis McGree.  Beautiful prose, no non-memorable scenes, real voices.  Capsule histories of Florida real estate in the 60s and 70s, the island of Grenada, construction minutiate -- and a great whodunit with marvelous torture, seduction and redemption episodes.  Highly recommended.