Best of
Noir

1977

One Deadly Summer


Sébastien Japrisot - 1977
    But it’s Fiorimond, the local mechanic, who wants her more.After just one date she moves in with him and his family. As Fiorimond starts to wonder if he’s doing the right thing, he has no idea that Elle is planning to avenge a terrible crime from the past…Set in the 1970s, and available in English again for the first time in decades, this is a true classic of French suspense.

Double Feature


Donald E. Westlake - 1977
    Westlake novellas, A Travesty and Ordo, one hilarious and one heartbreaking, are both set in the film world.

The Animal Factory


Edward Bunker - 1977
    Ron Decker is a newbie, a drug dealer whose shot at a short two-year stint in the can is threatened from inside and outside. He's got to keep a spotless record or it's ten to life. But at San Quentin, no man can steer clear of the Brotherhoods, the race wars, the relentlessness. It soon becomes clear that some inmates are more equal than others; Earl Copen is one of them, an old-timer who has learned not just to survive but to thrive behind bars. Not much can surprise him-but the bond he forms with Ron startles them both; it's a true education of a felon.

Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty


Albert Bermel - 1977
    In this incisive study, Albert Bermel looks closely at Artaud's work as a playwright, director, actor, designer, producer and critic, and provides a fresh insight into his ideas, innovations and, above all, his writings.Tracing the theatre of cruelty's origins in earlier dramatic conventions, tribal rituals of cleansing, transfiguration and exaltation, and in related arts such as film and dance, Bermel examines each of Artaud's six plays for form and meaning, as well as surveying the application of Artaud's theories and techniques to the international theatre of recent years.

The Hard-Boiled Detective: Stories from Black Mask Magazine, 1920-1951


Herbert Ruhm - 1977