Recommended reading - Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s (1997):

Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s

Published by Library of America.

Published 1997.

ISBN-10: 1883011493

ISBN-13: 9781883011499

Description:

Contents: The Killer Inside Me, by Jim Thompson; The Talented Mr. Ripley, by Patricia Highsmith; Pick-up, by Charless Willeford; Down There, by David Goodis; The Real Cool Killers, by Chester Himes.

This adventurous volume, with its companion devoted to the 1930s and 40s, presents a rich vein of modern American writing. Evolving out of the terse and violent style of the pulp magazines, noir fiction expanded over the decades into a varied, innovative, and profoundly influential body of work. The five novels presented here are authentic underground classics: Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me, with its psychotic narrator, a murderous West Texas Sheriff; Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, an astonishing study of the seductiveness of evil and the vagaries of personal identity; Pick-Up, Charles Willeford’s nihilistic love story of two lost souls adrift in San Francisco’s lower depths; David Doodis’ haunted, lyrical Down There (the inspiration for Truffaut’s classic film Shoot the Piano Player); and Chester Himes’ The Real Cool Killers, an explosive and sometimes wildly comic novel featuring Harlem detectives Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones. With this Library of America publication, these works are at last being recognized for their powerful literary qualities and their unique, sometimes subversive role in shaping modern American language and culture.

The Library of America, a nonprofit publisher, is dedicated to preserving America’s best and most significant writing in handsome, enduring volumes, featuring authoritive texts.