Customer Reviews

The Name of the Game is Death

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

To give credit where credit is due this was another recommendation from Gorman's "The Big Book of Noir" and it was right on point. As Gorman says about Marlowe "his best stuff just explodes every thirty pages or so".

Here's an exciting litle excerpt-the protaginost Drake ("the man with nobody's face")is in a motel room with Lucille who-as it turns out-gets her jollies by seducing men and then watching as her boyfriend barges in on them and beats the ... out of the man that Lucille just seduced. Drake, being a tough and smart guy, figures this out and ends up suckering Lucille's boyfriend into breaking into an empty motel room-he leaves frustrated and now Drake has Lucille all to himself."Now what are you going to do?", Lucille asks Drake.To quote the book:"I'll show you," I said. It was four in the morning before we left there. Fifty percent of us had enjoyed it."

What can I say-great book that they just don't make like this anymore.

A career bank robber becomes a detective in order to investigate the disappearance of his partner after a job goes awry. This book is dark, gritty and full of suspense. The book is really well written and has a strong plot. There are many twists and exciting characters. Although the book is a little hard to find it's worth the read. It's the first book in a series of 12. I can't recommend this book highly enough.

I thought I knew from hard-boiled until I ran into this nasty little gem. It's a cliche, but they simply do not write 'em like this anymore. The level of ruthlessness has you almost shaking your head in wonder. Yet our "hero" does have rules and we come to respect them. By the last page my jaw was so clenched my teeth hurt and I wished I could hand the guy a gun and see what happens next.

What can I say? This is just a terrific book. As explosive and unexptected as they come. Any one who loves hard-boiled books has got to read this one.

-Dave Zeltserman, author of In His Shadow

OK. You got your Chandler who's in love with his own words. You got your Hammett who started the whole thing off. You got a whole lot of other guys--Woolrich, Goodis, Thompson, the whole crew. And you got Dan Marlowe, who is GREAT.

This baby reads like Dan's middle initials are HB and you know what that stands for. No stinting on sex and the main character is smart and tough, too. Is this pulp? Yeah, you bet--the best pulp around. Written in the 50s, it holds up really well because there's no wasted words; Marlowe doesn't spend time showing off like the almighty Raymond does. He just gets right down to business immediately--the novel starts off with a bank robbery and then keeps its toughness straight through to the end.

When one of your crew gets whacked you check it out. That's what drives the book and it's a great driver, pushing and pulling through the guys and dames who make things sexy, ugly, interesting, or just plain crazy til the very end.

Great book for all hardboiled fans. Check it out, pardner.

Dan J. Marlowe had a long career as a hard-boiled writer, but - by all accounts - The Name of the Game is Death was the peak of his career. While on vacation in Seattle, I bought an old copy in a used bookshop. After reading The Name, I can definitely say that it lives up to its reputation.

The plot of the novel is simple. A career criminal and sociopath starts by recounting an Arizona bank robbery gone bad. After the robbery, the narrator and his partner decide to split up, with the partner going to Florida. Once in a Florida, the partner is supposed to mail the narrator part of the proceeds. Predictably, things don't go as planned and the narrator drives to Florida to investigate.

As other reviewers have noted, The Name is hard, hard, hard. All of the elements of the conventional tough-guy novel are here: murder, femme fatales, greed, and lots of violence. Marlowe offers no social commentary, he just tells an exciting story. The only downer about the book is that - since its publication in 1962 - so many other writers have followed this basic formula that it is predictable in places.

In short, fans of classic, hard-boiled novels will enjoy The Name of the Game is Death.

This is at least as hard boiled as Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me... If you love noir, you've got to read this novel.

The great thing about Amazon, Alibris, and the on-line booksellers is that obscure and almost forgotten novels are not impossible, or even especially difficult to find. That being said, if you like american noir circa 1960 (my Gold Medal original lists a publication date of 1962), you have to get a copy of this book, even if (like mine) the pages fall out as you read them and the tops of each falling page are as brown as the mud tracks his bad right leg dragged across the cheap carpet of the cheaper motel as he shambled to the bathroom to wash the blood from his hands and get one of those thin, pint sized motel glasses to hold a shot of the rye he'd seen glinting from the top of the tempermental Zenith tv that was playing the Sullivan show on this Sunday night whose quiet had been broken only by the fat man's porcine grunting as the shiv split his sternum.

Ok. whatever. Marlowe is a lot better at it than I am, but this is really a good enuf book that you just get carried away with silly delite in the genre.

Honestly, this novel never lets down, from start to finish. Yes it is pulp and no, it will never be compared to Proust (thank goodness), but the writing is fast and tough and not over the top. The hero is cool and smart and amoral, with a pretty decent backstory to at least suggest a foundation for his sociopathic tendencies. And since I am from Phoenix, and not a heck of a lot is set in this town (except the opening scenes of Psycho--of course, if you expand to greater Arizona, you also get Bless the Beasts and the Children and Billy Jack), it is fairly cool that the opening bank robbery occurs in my own fair city. Really, if you like noir of this generation and simply want to be entertained for a good long read (and also maybe handle a paperback that's been around for 50 years), this book is for you. It is my first Dan Marlow, who apparently wrote under multiple pseudonyms and may even have penned some porn, according to an internet speculator. In any case, I am going to check him out further the first chance I get.

The Name of the Game is an excellent hard-boiled thriller. The action is constant; the pace is straight-ahead; and hard knuckles are always flying.

In some sense, Marlowe channels Charles Willeford here, especially Cockfighter. Just as the protagonist of Cockfighter has a ruse he tries to convince the world of, so does the protagonist of The Name of the Game. The way the two protagonists interact with women is also the same.

Where the novels separate is the view of how even a shake an ordinary Joe can get from society. The protagonist of Cockfighter is cautious but hopeful about fitting in. The protagonist of The Name of the Game never intends to fit it because the game is rigged from the beginning.

Fans of older noir have a major discovery at hand with Dan J Marlowe!