Dancing on the Edge of the Abyss: Goodisville 2025

BLOGS: Join the Goodis bus tour on March 2 when we’ll visit Philadelphia locations tied to the noir master….

“The Kitchen-Sink Crime Drama: William Boyle on Saint of the Narrows Street” by WIlliam Blick

INTERVIEW: “I call it ‘kitchen sink crime drama.’ I was influenced by the realism of the 1950s and 1960s…novels, plays, and movies like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, This Sporting Life, and Look Back in Anger. They are all a big influence on this work….”

“Too Much of a Noir Ending?: on Late Noir” by Anees Aref

REVIEW ESSAY: “With their bold technical style and themes, Touch of Evil, Elevator to the Gallows, and other late-noirs discussed below opened the door for many later masters….”

“From Sun to Sun and ‘Biblical Noir’: An Interview with Kenneth Wishnia” by William Blick

INTERVIEW: “One of my favorite types of ‘noir’ is the more “hopeful” one…’one more job and I am getting out’….The other type which is more relevant today is that there are ‘noble projects’ that are doomed from the beginning because of how things have been set up….”

“Honor” by J. D. Horn

FICTION: “There was a run of three years straight when Rose’s family came out on top, and Myrna’s six feet under. But then Myrna’s family had double wins, three times over a decade. The law of averages had held true….”

“Nobody’s Favorite: from Detroit Massacre” by Barry N. Malzberg (1939-2024, Writing as Mike Barry)

NOVEL EXCERPT: “I don’t want to be anyone’s favorite law enforcement officer. When you’re dealing with shit, the only enforcement is death….”

“A New Sensation: Elizabeth Fenwick’s Disturbance on Berry Hill/A Night Run” by William Blick

BOOK REVIEW: “Fenwick’s work is unlikely to shock audiences like sensation fiction had done to the Victorians, but the domestic realism and colorful characters are likely to engage the avid mystery aficionado.”

“Hollywood Confidential: An Interview with Dan Bronson on Shout at the Devil” by Stephen Galloway

INTERVIEW: “Hollywood embodies the title of one of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s worst novels: it’s beautiful and it’s damned.”

“Round Like a Circle in a Spiral: The Poster Art of Film Noir” by Marlisa Santos

REVIEW ESSAY: “As the movie-viewing public was becoming more comfortable with these kinds of filmic depictions, poster art, never to shy away from marketing hooks, aimed to tantalize prospective audiences with images that promised entrance into a suspenseful world of increasingly commonplace criminality and subversion of systemic stability….”

“African Noir and Societal Critique: An Interview with Kwei Quartey” by William Blick

INTERVIEW: “In The Whitewashed Tombs, I aimed to voice and humanize the struggles and resilience of the LGBTQ+ community in Ghana and much of Africa, where some 32 countries have anti-LGBTQ laws, some with the death penalty as punishment…. But, more widely, it’s stunning and tragic that anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment is so prevalent over much of the globe….”