the heavy weight hard hitters from the arena of noir!!

Hi ya just joined..... and have recently finished 'after dark my sweet' but maybe that discussion has already been done. what I would like to share with you is two of the best hardboiled novels I've ever read.

No1 "The Friends Of Eddie Coyle" By George Higgins; I think this is the best crime novel I have ever come across. to quote Dennis Lehane 'You hold in your hands the game changing crime novel of the last fifty years.' The plot like most of the other classics is straight forward but the magic lies in the dialogue and pace. Eddie is a gunrunner and convicted on a felony wants to do a deal, so jumps into bed with the DA.
(its available on lulu.com & amazon.)

No2 "The Spoken Receipts Of Detective Smiley" By Marcus McCarthy; This novel has an authentic feel to it like your a fly on the wall, it's about the downward slide of a police informer set in south London and again the genius is in the dialogue and the restlessness of the characters involved.
(its available on lulu.com & amazon.)

Hope ya enjoy my suggestions if you haven't already.... and if you don't perhaps you have your own suggestions.

cheers!!

I've just joined too ink36 and on your recommendation have ordered The Friends of Eddit Coyle. Seems like I've missed that one - looks like a good read.

Couldn't find the other book anywhere though - not on Amazon or Abebooks.

Cheers

"Friends" as I recall, was made into a movie with Robert Mitchum.

Hi ya, Ammianus your spot on about the movie just looked it up and it's on the list. cheers.

Doublee hope you enjoy 'the friends of eddie coyle' as much as I did.
that other one 'the spoken receipts of detective smiley' I purchased on amazon, but it's also on lulu.com.

both are excellent reads but one thing I'll say about 'the spoken receipts' I came across some minor spelling mistakes. although I still give it a 10/10 rating. it was the same with 'the killing' by lionel white, my edition of that also came with some errors, and that was another read I really enjoyed.

cheers....

Great recommendations. You might check out "Dog eat Dog" by Edward Bunker. An authentic bank robber who did jail time got out and never went back.

I picked up Dog Eat Dog by Edward Bunker a few weeks ago and it's on my TBR pile. I am looking forward to reading it.

As for my own recommendation, has anyone here read any Fredric Brown? He's one of my favorite noir mystery writers, having written such great works as The Fabulous Clipjoint, Night of the Jabberwocky and many others, not to mention many works of science fiction. (One of the few authors who excelled at both genres).

However my personal favorite Fredric Brown mystery and perhaps my favorite mystery of all time would be The Far Cry. It's a dark story about a married man, having suffered a nervous breakdown, who moves away from his wife. He discovers that a murder of a young woman had taken place close to his new home 8 years previous and was never solved. He becomes obsessed with this and starts to investigate it under the guise of writing a newspaper article. The denouement is pretty surprising and disturbing. Highly recommended.

ink--I couldn't agree more on THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE. It's one of the greatest crime novels of all time. Another great one from the seventies is STREET 8 by Douglas Fairbairn. Very underrated, little-known noir masterpiece set in Miami.

On a more contemporary note, I would highly recommend THE LAST DEEP BREATH by Tom Piccirilli and MIAMI PURITY by Vicki Hendricks. For something a little more off the wall, try THE BASTARD HAND by Heath Lowrance.

There's a short story collection that is very edgy noir called BAD JUJU & OTHER TALES OF MADNESS AND MAYHEM by Jonathan Woods. Highly recommended.