"The bigger they come, the faster they fall. Ray Chandler proposed that a writer should have a man come through the doorThe big question: can anyone tell us if a movie was ever made from Fast One? Ta.with a gun already in his hand should things ever threaten to calm down, and perhaps that’s why he called Fast One ‘ultra hard-boiled’. With a body count of Cecil B. DeMille proportions, Paul Cain’s only novel (he also published a collection of short stories, Seven Slayers) arrived in 1933, after a serialisation in Black Mask. The joins show, much in the same way as gaps appear between explosions in a fireworks display. The terse, virtually monosyllabic prose seems hammered into the paper (Last line: “Then, after a little while, life went away from him.”) as gunsel Gerry Kells wreaks havoc in the criminal underworld of Depression-era LA, his hypnotic paranoia eventually justified as various kingpins conspire to rub him out. Harder than Chandler, bleaker than Hammett, sparer than James Cain, Fast One is an incendiary device in book form."
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Here’s One We Made Earlier: Fast One by Paul Cain
Those print-taking mommas over at The Rap Sheet were kind enough to ask us to contribute to their mammoth You’re Still The One series, in which crime-writerly types were invited to nominate the writer or novel they felt has been most unjustly overlooked, criminally forgotten or underappreciated over the years. We picked Paul Cain’s Fast One, to wit:
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Declan Burke has published a number of novels, the most recent of which is ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL. As a journalist and critic, he writes and broadcasts on books and film for a variety of media outlets, including the Irish Times, RTE, the Irish Examiner and the Sunday Independent. He has an unfortunate habit of speaking about himself in the third person. All views expressed here are his own and are very likely to be contrary.
Hi Peter - I think it's fairer to say that I try to write noir with humour ... but when I'm reading I'll read anything that's well-written, and I'm particularly fond of the hardboiled stuff that's so fast-paced there's no time for jokes and gags ... and Fast One fits the bill in that respect probably better than any of the early hardboiled novels. Cheers, Dec
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