Marching in a Month Of Mayhem

October appears to be the month with a disparate number of espionage writers, and September might have the greatest number of crime writing giants, but March, for reasons unknown, seems to have a stranglehold (if you’ll excuse the expression) on the toughest writers in the history of the genre.Among the most honored hardboiled writers of the 20th century are Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald, who created such iconic private eyes as the Continental Op, Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, and Lew Archer. These are definitely tough hombres, but Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer could have licked them all in the same afternoon without his porkpie hat hitting the ground.The Op, so rough that he enjoyed shooting bad guys, or at least punching them in the face, was, after all, middle-aged and fat. Spade laughed at guys who pulled pistols, but didn’t even carry his own gun because he didn’t like them. Chandler’s Marlowe and Macdonald’s Archer generally preferred to display their toughness in words, not fists. In case after case, they get beat up and respond with snappy dialogue.Marlowe is never tougher than when he talks with women. Told by one that she finds him rude, he replies: “I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings.”Archer, once again coming out on the short end of an altercation, stumbles to a coffee counter and orders some java. The blond waitress looks at him and says, “Did you know you got blood on your shirt?” The private eye answers,”I know it. I wear it that way.”Mr. Spillane was born on March 9, 1918, and his Hammer is a character that doesn’t usually finish second in a fight. Hammer took on two thugs in “The Big Kill,” described in loving detail:I snapped the side of the rod across his jaw and laid the flesh open to the bone. He dropped the sap, and staggered into the big boy with a scream starting to come up out of his throat, only to have it cut off in the middle as I pounded his teeth back into his mouth with the end of the barrel. The big guy tried to shove him out of the way. He got so mad he came right at me with his head down and I took my own damn time about kicking him in the face. He smashed into the door and lay there bubbling. So I kicked him again and he stopped bubbling. I pulled the knucks off his hand and then went over and picked up the sap. The punk was vomiting on the floor, trying to claw his way under the sink. For laughs, I gave him a taste of his own sap on the back of his head, and felt the bones go all to splinters. He wasn’t going to be using any tools for a long time.Loved by readers, despised by the literary establishment, Mr. Spillane once had his first seven books on the list of the top 10 best-selling fiction titles in American history.When an effete critic asked him how he thought such a thing was possible, Mr. Spillane warned him to watch out or he’d write three more.Of contemporary writers, no one is darker than James Ellroy, born March 4, 1948. I could quote paragraphs that make the above seem like Peter Cottontail, with descriptions of blood, brain matter, and viscera so graphic you’d lose your appetite for a week.But, as with Mr. Spillane, it would be a mistake to think that’s all there is to the work of Mr. Ellroy, who may be the most influential crime writer of the past two decades.Vivid depictions of the underside of Los Angeles,especially in the 1950s and 1960s, sharp characterizations that indelibly etch portraits into the brain and soul, and humor that makes you laugh even though you know it’s inappropriate combine to make his books important and memorable.Mr. Ellroy’s most enduring work will probably turn out to be the “L.A. Quartet,” which consists of “The Black Dahlia,””The Big Nowhere,””L.A.Confidential,” and “White Jazz.” It is one of the most ambitious projects undertaken by any crime writer, ever. These are books for the whole family, as Mr. Ellroy is fond of saying, if the name of your family is Manson.Max Allan Collins, born March 3, 1948, writes about different kinds of tough guys, including the decade-old Dick Tracy comic strip; stories about Nate Heller, a private eye whose cases take place in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s; Nolan, a career criminal selfdescribed as a “dinosaur” in starkly written capers; Quarry, a borderline psychotic Vietnam veteran whose career choice is that of a hit man; and the characters in his graphic novel “Road to Perdition,” later filmed with Tom Hanks.David Goodis, born March 2, 1917, is remembered today mostly by devotees of noir fiction and the French, who idolize him and his grim hopelessness as deeply as they do Jim Thompson. His earliest work, notably “Dark Passage,” was his best, eventually filmed with great success starring Humphrey Bogart. Efforts to revive interest in his books have failed in this country because they lack a crucial element in suspense fiction, which is, ah, suspense. Since all Goodis’s characters are clearly doomed zombies, filling their empty days with drugs, booze, and pointless sex with equally forlorn partners, we know that there will be no redemption or joy. Existentialist novels seldom leave one clamoring for more.These and other mystery writers, including Richard Condon (March 18, 1915), author of “The Manchurian Candidate,” Donald Hamilton (March 24, 1916), creator of Matt Helm, and the hilarious best seller Carl Hiaasen (March 12,1953),had their career paths chosen for them by being born in March, described by William Morris as the slayer of winter.Mr. Penzler is the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan and the series editor of the annual “Best American Mystery Stories.” He can be reached at ottopenzler@mysteriousbookshop.com.

Marching in a Month Of Mayhem

Marching in a Month Of Mayhem

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