“All You Need is a Gun and a Girl” by Jim Towns

He leaned across the seat and opened the door, watching every inch of her…. I. Bare trees clung to the snow-frosted hills around the ravine, and the girl who walked along the railroad tracks was tall and beautiful. She wore mirrored sunglasses, long coat, tall boots. An old surplus army bag swung on a leather […]

“My Father Met Jayne Mansfield” by Joseph Hirsch

He must have sensed her blonde came from a bottle…. and that his parents were liars, too. He met her as a child which somehow seems a waste, a thwarted prepubescent prank played by a horndog demigod. His head only came up to the curve of her oft-measured breasts, and when he peeked, he was […]

“Training” by Charles Rammelkamp

She gave into temptation…. It was difficult for me to breath. The guy I bought my dope from when I was in grad school in Boston lived on the fourth floor of the brownstone where my Notes-from-Underground basement studio was. Ralph owned a Doberman Pinscher named Mahogany, a sleek, athletic-looking animal, always at Ralph’s heel, […]

“Hard Case Crime, December 2020: Unlikely Masters” by Matthew Sorrento

On a few surprising releases from the noir fiction mainstay. Readers of the Hard Case Crime series are rarely unsatisfied and regularly served a nice surprise. On the centennial Ray Bradbury’s birth came one, in the form or a collection of his crime fiction. With the author a formative one for so many (myself included), […]

“Winter’s Perdition” by Mark Krajnak

I got a rocks glass of rye, and some cold hash to finish, as snow starts to fly.No carols being sung around these parts. Will find it hard to sleep tonight. Winter’s perdition is here. Tough to sleep when you don’t know who’s going to come through the door with a gat in hand. Just […]

“The World Out There: from the Book Purgatory” by John Talbird

It has been a week since the first murders…. he looks slowly around the store, dark, still, and empty. Usually, William parks near the back of the lot in the Westabout strip mall so customers can have spaces closer to the door. In his four years of managing Book Purgatory, he has waged a never-ending […]

“From Witness to Victim: the Story of Donna Gentile” by Anita DeFrancesco

She was my first cousin. Her killer or killers are still at large today. And her autopsy was the first to be officially sealed in the City of San Diego. A young woman’s body was discovered off Sunrise Highway 30 miles east of San Diego County, in Mt. Laguna, California, set in the forest surrounded […]

“Alphaville (1965): Godard’s Noir Transformation” by Tony Williams

In the hybrid-noir Alphaville, fantasy, pulp fiction, and other influences all merge in Godard’s challenging process. Daphne du Maurier’s anonymous narrator opens Rebecca (1938) with the line, “Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderly again”. By contrast, I often fantasize about strapping up certain students in an auditorium and forcing them to watch Godard’s […]

“The Girlfriend Problem” by Matthew Sorrento

And I would kill for him, still would, ever since we met. Do it or I’ll kill you, he told me. Times like this he’d turn on me, hit me. Didn’t matter what we’re doing, getting smokes, or dope, or him smashing me in bed. With him, it’s always there. You’re going in with me,he said, […]

“Worlds of Weird: Paul Green on Weird Detectives” by Ali Moosavi

Murdoch Mysteries (CBC, 2008- ) “So, what constitutes a ‘Weird Detective’? Some are legendary figures such as Professor Abraham Van Helsing, who is listed under Dracula as the ‘vampire hunter and occult detective‘ and Sherlock Holmes. Some are fiction characters belonging to real cases, such as Inspector Frederick Abberline, played by Johnny Depp in From […]