Night Pictures

by Kurt McGill


Reviewed by Jay A. Gertzman

 

This might be the best pulp noir crime novel since the 60s, when Horace McCoy, Charles Williams, Peter Rabe, Charles Williford, Jim Thompson, Mickey Spillane, Day Keene, and David Goodis were writing. This was the late classic period, before the genre which had done so much to gain attention from European readers began to fade into the soft-core erotica of the 70s. Kurt McGill must have read a lot of books by the aforementioned.

 

He has almost uncannily melded into one thriller many of their best sinister bad guys, mean streets and alleys, protagonists stunned into self-reflection, and obsessive, addicted social isolates. He gets the soft-core howlers right also: “she unzipped his fly with her teeth.”

Night Pictures is the correct title because McGill gets atmospherics perfect. The story is set in downtown Oakland. Tamale and red-hot pushcarts, guys lurking in doorways, empty storefronts. Nick, the narrator’s, description of a corn tamale smothered in chili gravy is not the only example of sensory delight. In fact, if Goodis is known for having his characters stuck with the worst food, McGill served his protagonist the most delectable. And he had the descriptive powers to make it so.


Nick is out to find out who bludgeoned the brains out of his friend and teacher, Phillip Sparrow. In the best noirs, the protagonist uncovers motives for crime which transform him. The prototype is Jake Gittes in Chinatown (“forget it, Jake”). Oakland has its metaphoric Chinatown too.

 

Jay A. Gertzman

 

Professor emeritus of English Mansfield University, author: "Pulp According to David Goodis"



 

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