I like people who are wrong. At least in literature. You can have your brainiacs like Hercule Poirot or Sherlock Holmes, I’ll take my saps and suckers, guys who get themselves in and out of trouble as they try to figure out what the hell is going on. They usually think they know more than they do, so they go where they shouldn’t go, do what they shouldn’t do, and say what they shouldn’t say, usually making matters worse, for themselves and for others.
Of course characters have been nosing down the wrong alley ever since Oedipus traveled to Thebes and raised questions about fate, identity, and unintended consequences, some of the essential elements of good crime fiction. And it’s in noir where the alleys are the darkest, the stakes highest, and the characters faced with some of the most basic and universal conflicts. It’s an old, oft-told tale, sure; the trick is in the telling. Here are a few of my favorite noirs of characters in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong idea, thinking everything will be alright.
Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham
William Lindsay Gresham’s Nightmare Alley (1946) is about as grim as they come, and almost as grim as Gresham’s real life (which provided some of the material for his novel).
Stan Carlisle thinks he can do better than work in a carnival, he might even think he’s better than the strongman, the fortuneteller, geek, and other performers. Stan thinks he can make it to the big time, and uses almost everyone he meets as another rung up the ladder of his success. He becomes the Great Stanton, conning the unsuspecting rich out of their money with a phony mentalist act, until he runs his grift on the wrong guy. Running from his mistakes and the people he’s wronged, Stanton falls back down the ladder, winding up exactly where he started. Well, actually lower, much lower.
Hell Hath No Fury by Charles Williams
Harry Madox is not short on confidence; he thinks he can outwit just about everybody in the tiny Texas town he’s drifted into. He’s selling used cars to the local yokels, but he’s certain he can take the bank, the young girl working at the dealership, and his boss’s wife. He’s also sure he can outsmart the local law. But, as Madox says himself, when you break the law, “you have to win all the time.” Madox thinks he can win, but he doesn’t realize other people might not like to lose. In his fourth novel, Hell Hath No Fury (1953)—reprinted as The Hot Spot—Charles Williams carefully exposes the cracks in Madox’s confidence and spins his “perfect” crime on a collision course Madox never sees coming.
The Erasers by Alain Robbe-Grillet
Almost everyone (and everything) is wrong in The Erasers (1953) by Alain Robbe-Grillet. The novel takes the basic plot of a murder investigation (or serial murders in this case) and folds it in on itself, blurring the lines between criminal and detective, suspect and victim, and almost every element of traditional storytelling (including time), until the repetition and doubling leave everyone—including the reader—dizzy and unsure of what is going on, until the very end. The Erasers, which harkens back to Oedipus and predates the metafiction popular in the 1960s, is a funhouse full of references, allusions, and traditions twisted into something original.
The Getaway by Jim Thompson
In Jim Thompson’s The Getaway (1958), “mastermind” bank robber Doc McCoy thinks he can easily steal a fortune and make his way to an idyllic criminal sanctuary in Mexico. But almost every action Doc makes triggers one catastrophe after another. Hoping to escape “a civilization which insisted upon conformity,” Doc and his wife Carol become prisoners to their own greed and desires, and then it gets worse.
If you’re only familiar with the film versions you’re in for a shock: the book is a much more harrowing descent into duplicity, betrayal, and the journey to a fantastical “paradise” is more of a descent into some truly horrible circles of Hell.
The Woman Chaser by Charles Willeford
The Woman Chaser (1960), might not be much of a crime novel, but Charles Willeford’s tale of a crooked used-car salesman who thinks he can score big in Hollywood—which leads him down and down a harsh path of humiliation until he plots his revenge—is all noir. Richard Hudson is cynical, critical of everyone, a user and abuser determined to make a better life by making a better movie. Hudson, who literally and figuratively gets into bed with all the wrong people, learns a harsh lesson that Hollywood is a lot more corrupt than the used-car racket, and he’s the one really getting screwed. Willeford tells the story like a screen treatment, but it reads like an outrageous nightmare.
Ride the Pink Horse, by Dorothy B. Hughes
It’s hard to pick a Dorothy B. Hughes novel that doesn’t have a character who gets into more and more trouble with every page. She likes to sink her characters way in over their heads and see how they’ll make out. Whether it’s Sailor, who’s out to blackmail his old boss, a US Senator, and outwit the cop who may or may not be after him (Ride the Pink Horse, 1946); or Dix Steele, who thinks he can outsmart everyone, including his best friend Brub, a detective looking for a serial killer (In a Lonely Place, 1947); or doctor Hugh Denismore, who has to try and clear himself of the murder of a hitchhiker he’d picked up earlier (The Expendable Man, 1963), as external forces tighten around him.
Hard Rain Falling, by Don Carpenter
Don Carpenter’s first novel, Hard Rain Falling (1966), follows the orphan Jack Levitt as he tries to live by his wits to get what he wants (money and sex, mainly). After a break-in goes bad, Levitt is sent to reform school, and then to a mental institution. Unable or unwilling to change his ways, Levitt is trapped in a cycle of crime and punishment, which lands him in then jail and then prison. Levitt’s life is also intertwined with Billy Lancing’s, a clever and talented pool hustler who Levitt admires (but also wants to rob, initially). Lancing and Levitt become cellmates in prison, where their friendship develops into intimacy. A “chance remark” from Levitt to another prisoner leads to confrontation and tragedy. After being released from prison, Levitt tries to transform himself, even committing himself to raising his son (a “replica of Jack”). But Leavitt’s actions, instead of protecting his son, only ensure that he winds up without him.
The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins
Eddie Coyle’s in a jam. He might get sent back to prison. But Coyle knows a way out; he’ll talk to a guy, make a deal. Eddie Coyle knows the score. He lectures almost everyone about the way the world is supposed to work, the way things should be done. The real trouble for Coyle is that he doesn’t have a clue how the world works. He likes to talk about trust and responsibilities, but he can’t see past his own problems. He’s in a jam and turns to all the wrong people to try and get out of it. George V. Higgins’ The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1970) is a taut crime novel that is also a cynical ode to lost loyalty and broken trust, with an old pro worked over by forces far beyond his control, or his understanding.
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