![]() Goodis is by no means the perfect writer. A decade after that, at 49, Goodis was dead. ![]() A successful author and Hollywood screenwriter by the age of 30 (pictured below with Bogart and Bacall, stars of the 1947 noir film Dark Passage, adapted from Goodis’ novel of the same name), a decade later he was churning out cheap paperback originals for the same pulp houses as Jim Thompson. Goodis’ personal life story seems especially poignant and I won’t try to summarise it here, but suffice to say that his fall from grace during his lifetime was the steepest of the three. All three were relatively successful in their time, all three had plenty of movies adapted from their novels, all fell from favour after their deaths only for their work to be resurrected decades later. In the case of many of these writers, such as Thompson, Raymond and Goodis, their status nowadays is that of ‘long forgotten, recently rediscovered cult crime author’. Though the year is young, 2017 is shaping up as the year of David Goodis. In 2015 I discovered Jim Thompson and in 2016 I read almost everything by James Sallis. In 2014 it was a Russian, Mikhail Bulgakov. Two again in 2013 with Derek Raymond and Daniel Woodrell. ![]() In 2012 it was two authors, Megan Abbott and William Gay. Most of these have tended to be American crime or country noir authors. ![]() About once a year I discover a writer whose work intrigues me sufficiently that I allow myself to become obsessed with their lives and work. ![]()
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