Customer Reviews

Woman in the Dark

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

 

 

Dashiell Hammett hit gold with his rough-edged anti-heroes and shadowy plots. But he struck out in "Woman in the Dark," a tepid novella that originally appeared in "Liberty" magazine before vanishing for twenty years. Since this will be interesting only to Hammett completists, maybe it should have stayed lost.

A lovely young woman stumbles to a smalll house with an injured foot. It turns out the inhabitant of the house is Brazil, an ex-criminal who did time for killing a man in a brawl. A thug arrives to bring the girl, Luise, back to the man she is living with -- except Brazil punches him out. Now they're both in trouble... and in danger... and on the lam.

"Woman in the Dark" isn't a particularly thrilling thriller. Hammett's heart didn't seem to be in this tale; it's slow and wandering, and the grand showdown is somehow anticlimactic. What's more, it's very rushed -- it almost feels like Hammett scribbled it out with the intent of expanding it into a full-length novel.

Hammett's gritty, somewhat minimalist writing is a little awkward this time around. "One of the men pulled off his cap -- it was a gray tweed, matching his topcoat -- and..." is only one example of the unusually choppy style. But his sense of atmosphere is still unparalleled, with all the grime, grease and smoke of his urban backdrop.

The characterizations are sketchy at best. Brazil is much like Hammett's other anti-heroes, with a tough-guy attitude over some very intense feelings. Love interest Luisa is a walking paper doll, a typical exotic kept woman who falls for our anti-hero -- although it's never quite clear why they do fall in love.

"Woman in the Dark" is an unusually flat, sketchy novel by a classic mystery author. One of Hammett's few misfires, this is a curiosity but nothing worth getting excuted about.

Hammett's style is good enough that you do care about the two main characters. But something's missing. It is almost as if he was lacking interest in his own story. Maybe not.

Whatever the case, it's worth reading just because it's Hammett. It tells the story of a guy who got a bad rap the first time around, and just a few weeks after getting out of jail, he finds himself in danger of going back. There's a feeling of hopelessness here and the ending seems a bit ambiguous.

It's a good crime adventure short, but far from the best Hammett. It's still worth having in your collection.

This short novel was published originally in Liberty Magazine in three parts, and it is now in three chapters--each one reaching a climax that makes the reader quickly turn the page to finish the book at one reading. We have Hammett's hard-boiled protagonist--not a detective--but an attractive, very masculine ex-con named Brazil, and a world-weary, beautiful Swiss woman fleeing from the decadent world she now despises. The tension in the story derives both from the relationship between the two main characters and from their efforts to flee the police and the woman's pursuers. As always, Hammett's prose is marvellous, sharp, pointed, and even lyrical. This is the last piece of fiction he wrote before The Thin Man, and if you love Hammett, you must read this well-plotted and thrilling tale.

Love may be a many splendored thing, but it sure as heck ruined Dashiell Hammett. This story originally appeared in three installments in Liberty magazine in April, 1933. He had met Lillian Hellman two years earlier, with whom he was to share a rather troubled but now mythical romance (and an unrepentant and slavish enthusiasm for Joseph Stalin) for the rest of his life. The next year he published his final novel, The Thin Man, and then fell silent with a writer's block that ranks second only to that of Joseph Mitchell in legend.

Woman in the Dark is certainly not a novel; at best it's a novella and even then it feels more like the outline for a longer work. The woman of the title is Luise Fischer, the Swiss-born kept woman of a wealthy thug named Kane Robson. Having walked out on him one evening, she twists her ankle and stops for help at cottage occupied by Brazil, a phlegmatic ex-con, who once killed a man in a barroom brawl. When Robson shows up with a henchmen to demand that Luise come back to him, Brazil punches the other man who bangs his head, perhaps fatally, on the fireplace mantle. Now both Brazil and Luise have a reason to take it on the lam :

He emptied his glass and went to the front door, where he made a pretense of looking out at the night.

As he turned from the door he caught her expression, though she hastily put the frown off her face. His smile, voice were mockingly apologetic : 'I can't help it. They had me away for a while--in prison, I mean--and it did that to me. I've got to keep making sure I'm not locked in.' His smile became more twisted. 'There's a name for it--claustrophobia--and that doesn't make it any better.'

'I am sorry,' she said. 'Was it--very long ago?'

'Plenty long ago when I went in,' he said dryly, 'but only a few weeks ago that I got out. That's what I came up here for--to try to get myself straightened out, see how I stood, what I wanted to do.'

'And?' she said softly.

'And what? Have I found out where I stand, what I want to do? I don't know.' He was standing in front of her, hands in pockets, glowering down at her. 'I suppose I've just been waiting for something to turn up, something I could take as a sign which way I was to go. Well, what turned up was you. That's good enough. I'll go along with you.'

So much for the set up, in the two sections that follow, the police track them down and Brazil is shot, but the ending suggests that everything may work out for the two who have by now fallen in love.

It's tempting to read the story autobiographically. Two interesting and seemingly dynamic characters meet up and embark on an exciting though fairly implausible love affair, but then their story just kind of tails off into ambiguous and unconvincing anticlimax. Despite periodic flashes of Hammett's trademark hardboiled style, the book is generally disappointing. The conclusion of the story in particular is a far cry from the great final scene of The Maltese Falcon. Ultimately, the book is interesting chiefly as an indicator of where Hammett was headed just before he stopped writing, but if it's an accurate indication, we didn't miss much.

GRADE : C

This is a brief story, about 75 pages, but packs in all of Hammett's hard-boiled best. The mysterious, beautiful woman appears one night, with a trail of trouble catching up to her. Our hero, if you could call him that, offers his help without knowing what help she needs. Her past catches up to her, his catches up to him, and hers catches up to him.

He's sleaze but she trusts him, a little. His friends are sleaze but he trusts them, a little. The cops are sleaze, and nobody trusts them.

You weren't looking for the Great American Novel, you were looking at Hammett. It's dark, moody, and gritty, as you expected. but the right people get something in the end. It's not the finest, but it's a godd evening's read.

//wiredweird

I saw a British special with the main character reading this book. I looked up the title and was surprised to learn the author was Hammett. The seventy six pages went by fast holding my attention to the many turn of events Hammett puts in his story. Life is as he writes, quick and unknowing. Really a good read.

Dashiell Hammett, along with Raymond Chandler, reinvented the detective genre in the 1930's and 1940's. They moved the genre away from the amateurish and simple parlor detectives that had previously dominated the genre to hard-boiled action characters who knew what was what and didn't mind taking a beating to get the bad guys. And along the way they produced some very memorable literary characters as well. Nick Charles, Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe are well known exemplars of the action detective. However, on the way to creating these literary works of art Hammett did journeyman's work at the detective genre in various pulp detective magazines and in serial form in popular magazines. That is how the short novel under review, Woman In The Dark, began its life.

The late Robert B. Parker, a very fine detective story writer in his own right, noted in the introduction to this work that this plot line, and its twist and turns, represented a very strong example of Hammett's sense of the randomness of human existence. But also the drive for some regularity, some place to hang one's hat, as well. Even down at the edges of society, the places where no one really wants to be, the place of kept women, cons, and ex-cons and of those who have the resources to make such dwellers their playthings. The plot line centers on a hardened, take no bull, been around the block, femme fatale, certainly not your typical damsel in distress, who is fed up with the antics of the rich guy who "rescued" her, for a time, the antics of the rich guy who doesn't like to take no for an answer, especially when he has bought and paid for the merchandise (the femme fatale in this case), and a hard-nosed, hard-luck ex-con (a non-detective for once, if you can believe that) who simply will not go back to prison but who is not adverse to a little romance. And is willing to give, and take, a hard punch, if necessary.

Naturally, as is almost always the case with Hammett, the story line is driven, Hemingway-style, by sparse, functional language. However, for my money, there is just not enough of it to grip the imagination. Other than as an example, arguably a failed example, of Hammett trying to put steamy love interest and hard-boiled guys together on short notice, this novelistic effort could have stayed back in the pulp archives. Or waited to be anthologized in the Library Of America series. For the real Hammett read The Thin Man or The Maltese Falcon, those two efforts, my friends, are why Hammett is in the American literary pantheon.

Even Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth struck out at times. And Hammett? He may have been the father of modern literary noir, delivering punches and jabs to the stomach to make us wince, but even he swung and missed once and a while. To say that WOMAN IN THE DARK does not pack the punch of THE MALTESE FALCON or the CONTINENTAL OP collection of stories would be to give this book more credit than it is due even through the negative comparison.

It is not so much that anything is wrong with this novella. It is just completely forgettable. Nothing sticks to the ribs. Sure the story is good - a dame runs away from her guy, thugs are in pursuit, with the `hero' bringing his own rough justice to day. But it is not the story that makes a book good, but rather the nuance that an author brings to it.

Hammett here is just going through the motions. I found myself discussing Hammett recently with a friend and, when he mentioned that he had never heard of WOMAN IN THE DARK, I could only think that there was a reason for that. In the catalogue of an author's work, this one should have remained lost behind the bookshelf.

Woman in the Dark is a 76 page novella and should be judged as such. Holding what is essentially a long short story to the same standards as a full length novel is both unrealistic and unfair.
Character development and intricacy of plot both must necessarily play diminished roles under the restrictive novella format.

The principle characters, Brazil and Luise, are two very interesting literary creations. Hammett gives the reader several hints as to their respective backstories, but much is left unsaid. It therefore falls to the reader and his or her imagination to flesh out the details as to how these characters have come to find themselves in the circumstances described in this novella.

Think of Woman in the Dark as you would a radio play. Not everything is presented clearly so you are forced to use your imagination. Such participation on the reader's part carries with it its own type of satisfaction.
Read Woman in the Dark and appreciate it for what it is. A timeless tale of love and jealousy told in crisp, unadorned language. Highly recommended.

Strumpet-in-distress Luise runs across burly ex-con Brazil while attempting to escape the evil clutches of rich abusive boyfriend. Rich boyfriend resents losing girl to burly ex-con. Trouble for the new couple ensues. Serious trust issues abound.

Known for epicurean plot cooking, Hammett keeps 'Woman In The Dark' strictly meat-and-potatoes.

He subtitled this 76 page 'long' story "A Dangerous Romance". Truth be told, this is about as romantic as Hammett's stuff ever got---rough embraces, lips pressed hard and tightly together. You get the idea...except there doesn't seem to be enough of that to qualify the tale as a romance.

Dialogue is pretty faithful Dashiellese, although the 'OGJI'--- the Obsolete Gangster Jargon Index --is as low as I've seen. Less than 1.0 per page.

Regardless of my notions of romance and gangster palaver, this is a fast and satisfying read by one of the best writers of the genre. But then, any Hammett is better than none.