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1955

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Charles Willeford - 1955

He Holed Up With a Helpless LushProwling the grimy streets of San Francisco low-life, Helen is a beautiful, sensuous drunk - and a pathetically easy pick-up.

Harry just wants to help, but before long he and Helen are both adrift in a sea of alcohol - until Harry conceives the ultimate crime...

A Bullet for Cinderella

John D. MacDonald - 1955

Her veneer was big city … but one look and you knew that Toni Rassell’s instincts were straight out of the river shack she came from.

I watched her as she toyed with the man, laughing, her tumbled hair like raw blue-black silk, her brown shoulders bare. Eyes deep-set, a girl with a gypsy look. So this was the girl I had risked my life to find. This was the girl who was going to lead me to a buried fortune in stolen loot.

After Dark, My Sweet

Jim Thompson - 1955

William "Kid" Collins was once a respected boxer.

Now he's a drifter, on the run after escaping from a mental institution. One afternoon he meets Fay, a beautiful young widow. She is smart and decent -- at least when she's sober. Soon Collins finds himself involved in a kidnapping scheme that goes drastically wrong almost before it even begins. Because the kid they've picked up isn't like other kids: he's diabetic and without insulin, he'll die. Not the safest situation for Collins, a man for whom stress and violence have long gone hand-in-hand.

The Killing

Lionel White - 1955

Johnny Clay, an ex-con determined to strike it rich, has worked out a fool-proof scheme to knock off a racetrack payroll.

The two million bucks should be enough to last him a lifetime or two. But a two-faced dame has another idea: Let Johnny do the work, then she'll grab the swag for herself and her boyfriend.

The Name Is Archer

Ross Macdonald - 1955

MYSTERYIncludes the following stories:Find the womanGone girlThe bearded ladyThe suicideGuilt-edged blondeThe sinister habitWild goose chaseMidnight blueSleeping dog.

MYSTERYIncludes the following stories:Find the womanGone girlThe bearded ladyThe suicideGuilt-edged blondeThe sinister habitWild goose chaseMidnight blueSleeping dog

A Panorama of American Film Noir: 1941-1953

Raymond Borde - 1955

When it appeared in France in 1955, A Panorama of American Film Noir was the first book ever on the genre: this clairvoyant study of Hollywood film noir is at last available in English translation.A Panorama of American Film Noir addresses the essential amorality of its subject from a decidedly Surrealist angle, focusing on noir's dreamlike, unwonted, erotic, ambivalent, and cruel atmosphere, and setting it in the social context of mid-century America.Beginning with the first film noir, The Maltese Falcon, and continuing through the post war "glory days," which included such films as Gilda, The Big Sheep, Dark Passage, and The Lady from Shanghai, Borde and Chaumeton examine the dark sides of American society, film, and literature that made film noir possible, even necessary.A Panorama of American Film Noir includes a film noir chronology, a voluminous filmography, a comprehensive index, and a selection of black-and-white production stills."Incredibly, this is the first English translation of the very influential 1955 French book that initially identified, described and assessed the Hollywood movies that we now term film noir .

. . a seminal work of cinema description and analysis and therefore an essential purchase for most libraries." —From the Starred Review in Library JournalRaymond Borde (1920 - 2004), founder of the Cinémathèque de Toulouse, wrote extensively on film history.; among his short films is a study of the artist Pierre Molinier.Etienne Chaumeton was the film critic of the Toulouse newspaper La Dépêche until his death.

Death's Sweet Song

Clifton Adams - 1955

His face was burned to the color of old leather, and I guessed he was the type that spent a lot of time on a golf course, or maybe a tennis court.

We talked a little about the weather and how hot it was, and then I hung up the hose and went to work on the windshield. That was when I got my first good look at the woman. And she just about took my breath away. Originally published in 1955.