Customer Reviews

His Name Was Death

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Quiet reclusive printer Darius Conn is the last person anyone would suspect of being a murderer. He is mild mannered, private, and respectable. However, as usual in a Fredric Brown noir mystery novel, things aren't always what they seem. Conn has some murderous secrets. For one thing he has gotten away with the murder of his wife, and life looks good from this point on. The formerly honest businessman has turned to counterfeiting, but a couple of mistakes on his part lead to the necessity for another murder, then another...

One of Brown's most thrilling novels, in my opinion. Not every thing Brown wrote was great, but at his best none could match him. This is one of his best.

Five Stars.

Brown's short novel, His Name Was Death, is a masterpiece of concentric, convoluted plotting. It starts with a simple exchange of cars and a cashed check, which then spirals into multiple linked and inescapable homicides.

Each chapter starts from the viewpoint of a different character at first. There is a smooth mix of dialog internal to the narrating character in each chapter along with completely believable conversation. Often, there is great irony between what is going on in the conversation versus what is going through the internal mental dialog.

The novel resolves itself quickly, and satisfyingly. The setting Santa Monica is described very accurately. Brown has mid century LA down cold as he spins his tale.

You will not be disappointed if you make an effort to find this fine work.

I read a lot of noir and everybody says how great His Name Was Death is. It doesn't live up to the hype. The stream-of-consciousness style of writing, total absence of chapters, out-of-nowhere twist ending and the overall lack of action conspire against it being considered a classic. It just wasn't tough, sexy or bleak enough to be a good noir. Frankly, I had a difficult time slogging through it. I much prefer the work of Jim Thompson, David Goodis, Gil Brewer, Charles Williams, Charles Willeford, etc. If you are going to buy it anyway, for goodness sake don't get the Black Mask edition because they do a terrible job on their reprints, riddled with typos, formatting errors, etc. Instead, get the 1991 Vintage Crime/Black Lizard edition with the cool B&W cover like I did. At least it will look good sitting on your shelf!