Once upon a time Whitey was a crooner with a million-dollar voice and a standing invitation from any woman who heard him use it. Until he had the bad luck to fall for Celia. And then nothing would ever be the same.In Street of No Return, David Goodis works the magic that made him one of the most distinctive voices in hard-boiled fiction, creating a claustrophobic universe in which wounded men and women collide with cataclysmic force.

    So with nothing to lose, he applies for the job. The person doing the hiring is a nice surprise. Joyce is the ship captain’s wife, and Martin is just the person she’s looking for. Captain Sloan is too lenient and needs a chief officer with backbone. He’s also too old, too crippled, and just too ugly for Joyce. Theirs is a marriage of convenience that has grown inconvenient for Joyce. What she needs in a chief officer is more than a man who can keep the crew in line. She needs a man who will help her replace the captain…

    It was four a.m. on a muggy Washington morning and the liquor hadn’t helped. Neither had the jam session at Sully’s. That was the hellish thing about a torch – the longer you carried it, the hotter it burned."