Customer Reviews

Black Friday

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4 star:		(2)
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Even if Black Friday isn't Goodis best, it is surely a good introduction to his dark and rich universe. Almost unknown in America before the 60's or 70's, Goodis is one of the best author of what French critics have call "roman noir", and possibly the missing link between Dash Hammett and Ray Chandler, and today's authors like Block and Ellroy. In Black Friday, Goodis write about his own great obsession: bad things happens to good poeple. It's the same story he tells over and over again, in Cassidy's Girl, or in Shoot The Pianist. The heroes is caught in a situation where there is almost no chance to escape. You'll read in two or three hours, praying for the poor guy (even if you'll know from the first page that he will fail). The book is also speaking of euthanasia, in a discreet but sensible way.

This book is beyond the pale of any contemporary work and stands out over other earlier pulp fiction writers. The reader is nabbed and thrown brutely along with the protaganist, into a romantic and scary, Philadelphia of thugs and misery, freakish characters, true love and a town without a pity. It is one of the best reads for the genre I have ever encounterd. In fact, I believe that the other reviewers may be from France or other countries. I searched for the rights several years ago and found that someone in France owned it and it is not well known here. Get it and cherish it. Filmmakers: Lawrence Bender where are you?

I've always had a fixation on David Goodis, probably the most neglected and greatest crime writer to come out of the 50's. His prose beats Thompson and his characters are gloomier and darker than Chester Himes. Blonde on the Street Corner and The Street of No Return and Black Friday are all awesome character studies of down and out losers beset upon by booze, poverty and the mean streets of Philly. Goodis has no heroes in cheap suits. No Mike Hammer's or Sam Spade's talking sharp and banging their secretaries while they solve the crime minus a few bumps and bruises. It was said that Goodis wrote suicide notes, not crime novels. He was in Holloywood writing scripts for a few years but then went back to Philly and lived out his life pumping out crime novels while living above the garage at his parents house. He was a recluse on the level of JD Salinger and visited whores and walked the grey alleyways and haunted the smoky bars of Philly until he died...a good desolate noir life. Anyways, it is good to pay homage to guys like him -- a forgotten old crime dog who deserves an worthy epitaph in the Canon of American Crime Fiction.