Hardboiled Detective Fiction: I take my brandy any way

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Hardboiled Detective Fiction: I take my brandy any way

Heavy Metal: Sep 1, 2014; America's $1 Funnyman

I started The Big Sleep lately, really digging it. Odd that the movie didn't go with the narration, I love that great narration in the Murder My Sweet movie. Also took out the Postman Always Rings Twice book, gonna give that a go.

# ¿ Jun 10, 2015 06:16

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 04:08

Heavy Metal: Sep 1, 2014; America's $1 Funnyman

That sounds pretty dark, maybe a bit too dark for me, but I do plan to check out some of his other books. Speaking of Hard Case Crime books (that's published as one of them), any gems or personal favorites in that line? It looks like they throw in some new books too as well as classic reprints. Stuff like "Fade to Blonde" and whatnot, anybody dig any of these books? They seem pretty obscure, at least by GoodReads standards, only having a few hundred ratings on a lot of them.

# ¿ Sep 30, 2016 09:05

Heavy Metal: Sep 1, 2014; America's $1 Funnyman

Right on thanks, I'll add that to the ol' reading list.

# ¿ Sep 30, 2016 15:16

Heavy Metal: Sep 1, 2014; America's $1 Funnyman

DrVenkman posted:

You can't really go wrong with anything from HCC, though the book that Gore Vidal wrote is a little hit or miss.

MURDER IS MY BUSINESS is one I like a lot, and Shane Black has named it as a big influence on his own work, along with anything that Brett Halliday has written. The QUARRY series from Max Allan Collins is excellent and really anything from Lawrence Block is worth while. Though it doesn't quite suit the label, I thought that Stephen King's JOYLAND was very good. It's essentially a mystery with some supernatural stuff on the fringes. Maybe. I also love the covers they did for them and was tempted to get the variants just so I'd have the alternate art. On that note, I'd love some of them blown up and made into posters.

What's awesome though is that HCC are about to release a new book from Westlake and it's a riff on Bond. He was approached by Bond producers to come up with a story, and it was set during the handover of Hong Kong. They never used it so Westlake turned it into a book but never got around to publishing it. I mean look at this, it screams 007:

http://www.hardcasecrime.com/books_bios.cgi?entry=bk144

Very very cool! I had that prequel The First Quarry on my to-read list too, looks like a good self contained one to try out. That Bond-ish Westlake book is very promising, I enjoyed the Commando 2 screenplay that never got made, random note.

# ¿ Oct 2, 2016 19:32

Heavy Metal: Sep 1, 2014; America's $1 Funnyman

Remulak posted:

I read the Commando 2 screenplay, although the one I found way by DeSousa, is there one by Westlake?

Indeed not by Westlake, mentioned it as another unmade movie thingy that came to mind. But it is awesome that somebody else on here has read it. Now I just need to read BeetleJuice Goes Hawaiian sometime.

Heavy Metal fucked around with this message at 15:56 on Oct 4, 2016

# ¿ Oct 4, 2016 15:54

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