Customer Reviews

Home is the Sailor

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It's the mission of Hard Case Crime to re-introduce lost classic noir fiction to a modern reading public and nowhere is that mission better fulfilled than with Home Is The Sailor.

Day Keene, one of the all-time, yet sadly forgotten greats is at his best in this fine novel. Swede Nelson is as tough as they come but it is his overall decency which underpins this twisting tale of murder, theft and blackmail. The poor guy hits port after decades at sea with the idea of settling down to a normal, happy life and before his feet are wet winds up involved in a murder plot, helplessly in love then married to a mecurial femme fatale who may want Swede dead as much as she loves him. The action is great in this one, the characters unforgettable, the pace rapid-fire while never seeming thin. This book is everything that good noir fiction is supposed to be and Keene deserves a second chance with new readers.

It's easy to get to be blinded by the Big Three: Hammett/Chandler/Macdonald and overlook some of the forgotten greats who helped to make mystery fiction what it is today. Hurrah for Hard Case Crime and its mission and hurrah for Home Is The Sailor. It is a great novel that does not disappoint.

I can't remember the last time I have had such an enjoyable reading experience!
This book is rather legendary in pulp fiction circles and I have read about it for years. I was really excited when Hard Case Crime announced that it was reissuing it after all this time.
HOME IS THE SAILOR utilizes every pulp convention in the book, and I think it is because of this that it works so well. This book would not be written now...it is definitely of its time. Then again, so are the movies "The Postman Always Rings Twice" and "The Big Sleep." This is a great part of its charm and I found myself nostalgic for a time I didn't live in and a world that probably never existed.
What is most interesting to me about this book is that, despite the wonderfully over-the top portrayal of its characters, it still shows that though times may change, the screwy aspects of the relationships between men and women don't.
For those who like this genre of fiction, I cannot recommend this book enough. For those who have never read classic hard-boiled pulp fiction, this is an excellent place to start. It's the template for every one you'll ever read, but like an original Muddy Waters song, it may have been done a thousand different ways by a thousand different people, but it was never done better.

Day Keene's name (itself a pseudonym for Gunnar Hjerstedt) isn't as well-known as James M. Cain, Jim Thompson, Dashiell Hammett, or Raymond Chandler, the acknowledged masters of noir literature. That's probably because Keene's writing isn't as generally palatable, tending toward an even darker tone than the others.

Even in a book with such irredeemable characters as Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice, there is a sense that they are at least aware that what they are doing is wrong. There is no such guarantee with Day Keene. (In one of his later books, for example, one character has molested his mentally-disabled sister so often that she stays in bed most of the time, just waiting.)

Home is the Sailor is, like most of its ilk, based on the common assumption that a woman who is good in bed can make a man do anything, and killing is just the beginning. Usually the men in these books are about half-witted, mostly unaware of how skillfully they are being manipulated until it's too late. Such is the fate of Swede Nelson, who falls into the clutches of young widow Corliss Mason and gets taken on the ride of his life, with options for the other kind, when all he wants to do is settle down and buy a farm....

Corliss is a lot of the draw that this book holds, her status as a femme fatale is secure, and Swede Nelson is the kind of fallible hero who is easy to identify with. I saw the revelation coming miles away, but I've been reading a lot of these kinds of books lately, and Keene more than makes up for it with the pace of the story (though it is a little on the long side once things start to wrap up). With Home is the Sailor acting as the springboard, I'll definitely be looking for more from Day Keene.

Poor Swen "Swede" Nelson. A career sailor, all he wanted was to do was hang up his bell-bottoms and buy a farm in Hibbing, Minnesota. Find a wife, have a bunch of kids, and live happily ever after. Until, that is, he met Corliss Mason. A not-so-grieving widow and owner of a southern California seaside motor court, the sensual Corliss literally sweeps Swede off his feet, and all plans to return to the heartland are temporarily put on hold. Faster than you can say "big con", Swede and the witchy Corliss are married, and in the next heartbeat the hard-drinking, hard-punching sailor is a murderer.

This is classic pulp fiction - the kind of writing that invented "hardboiled" as a descriptor. Written in the early 50's, some of the sociology seems quaint and a bit dated in today's whacky politically correct culture, but that just adds to the fun. And while the careful reader will see the pieces falling into place a bit too early, neither will that detract from the well-paced, high-grit tale of blind love and deceit. But author Day Keene keeps a couple of neat tricks up his sleeve to make for an interesting climax. Kudos to Hard Case Crime for bringing these vintage masterpieces of crime fiction back to life.

Home Is The Sailor was my introduction to Day Keene. I liked the author's hard-hitting style, but by the end this book winds up being predictable and generic, like a typical 1950s Hollywood crime movie. The too quickly and neatly-wrapped-up happy ending is definitely not in keeping with what I expect from noir and really put me off; plus, the improbable (some might say, ridiculous) mystery behind the femme fatale and murder victim is so badly and blatantly given away by the mid-point that it failed to register any impact at all with me by the time it was finally clinched in the climax... That is, other than to groan, say "D'OH!" and smack my forehead, Homer Simpson style. I don't regret the read, it's fast-paced, sexy and exciting enough, but ultimately falls victim to too many cliche's of the genre.

Since I am a sucker for cool cover art, Day Keene's Home is the Sailor (Hard Case Crime) was on my to-read list from the get-go. Not many of their covers simultaneously have a car going over a cliff with a hot babe in a too-tight dress. Then I learned a little about him and how much stuff he actually wrote. Couple that with more recent comments about him and I was quite excited to crack the book.

I had to chuckle when I read the first two sentences: "It was night. It was hot." (So, basically it was a dark and not-so-stormy night? Aren't we writers cautioned not to start a book with the weather?) Nonetheless, I read on.

Pulp fiction is known for its pace. Old movies--film noir and others--are also known for their pace. It's fast. Nowhere but in pulp fiction and old movies do men and women fall in love on sight. It happens to Swen Nelson, a sailor with $12,000 in hand and dreams of a life on land on a farm in Minnesota. But before he can get there, he meets Corliss Mason, the owner of the Purple Parrot bar-and-hotel establishment. He falls for her, she for him. They are all set to get married and move to the heartland when one thing leads to another and they have to get rid of a body.

Keene's Nelson drives the story and faces plenty of questions. One character keeps imploring Nelson to go away while he still can. A man threatens Nelson to stay away from his wife. And, through it all, Nelson puts away an astonishing amount of rum. The book takes place over four days and he's drunk most of the time, a fact that almost every other character comments on. How does Nelson function with so much booze in him? Must be the sailor DNA.

In my review for The Guns of Heaven, I commented on some of the asides written out and how they really didn't serve the story like I expected them to do. Well, the opposite is true for Home is the Sailor. There's an aside, just some conversation between two characters, that comes back around like a boomerang and hits you between the eyes. An astute reader will put two-and-two together before the characters do (I did, at least) but it still makes the story fun.

One sad thing I noticed is the paltry number of Keene books available. Other than this one by Hard Case Crime, there are only two modern reprintings of Keene's books at Amazon. Guess I'll have to start the hunt in used bookstores.

Oh, about the ending: Just like Angel Dare in Money Shot, Swen Nelson gets a chance to really examine himself and ask the question "Who am I?" And we get the answer in a brilliant last line. Don't flip to the end; it'll ruin it for you. Just go with it. You'll enjoy the ride.
(excerpt from http://scottdparker.blogspot.com)

I really enjoyed this noir-ish thriller, for a couple of reasons. First, although "Home Is The Sailor" is definitely a hardboiled, noir-ish crime novel, it avoids the obvious trappings of such. So, instead of dark alleys, an impersonal big city, dingy tenements and such, here the settings include sunny Florida, a cute little motor court, and nice beaches. Secondly-- and here I'm going to go into some minor spoilers, so skip right to the next paragraph if you want to know absolutely nothing about the way the plot plays out-- I liked the way the main character wasn't one of those blindly lovestruck chumps who totally gets waylaid by the femme fatale's frame job, and yet, things still ended up a little sad for our hero in the end. In other words, the sadness, darkness, and the "unfairness of it all" are delivered in a subtle way, not in the obvious taking-the-fall-for-something way employed by many noir thrillers.

"Home Is The Sailor" is also a fast, to-the-point read that doesn't overstay its welcome. So, you'll thoroughly enjoy traveling along with Swede, our rough, imperfect hero, as he tries to sort out the mess he immediately gets involved in upon giving up his lonely but uncomplicated life at sea. This is another top-notch offering by the folks at Hard Case Crime.