From Booklist
It's been a good season for rediscovering pulp fiction, first with reissues of early crime novels by Max Allan Collins (
The Last Quarry) and Lawrence Block (
Lucky at Cards) and now with a pair of noirish thrillers from experimental novelist Markson (
Vanishing Point, 2004). In the early 1960s, before Markson made a name for himself with more literary fare, he turned out these two Harry Fannin novels, both of which observe all the hard-boiled conventions but do so with a head-turning flair for language and a surprising amount of emotional depth. The first concerns the murder of Fannin's ex-wife (the tramp of the title) and gives Markson plenty of opportunity to display the cracks in his hero's tough-as-nails exterior.
Epitaph for a Dead Beat is the show-stopper, though, offering a thoroughly entertaining--campy but never out-and-out silly--look at what mainstream society considered the outrageous behavior of Greenwich Village beats. Readers expecting tolerance for alternate lifestyles will be sorely disappointed, but pulp fans will have a ball.
Bill OttCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
