“Horses” Power

Because we have yet to come up with some similarly clever idea, we’re a bit envious of those crime-fiction-related blogs that boast weekly features, such as Nathan Cain’s Wednesday “paperback porn” covers at Independent Crime and Duane Swierczynski’s “Monday Moment of Noir” entries at his Secret Dead Blog, that rarely fail to entertain. The latter has been attracting our eyes frequently of late. After picking through the literary gems generated by Gerald Butler (author of the brilliantly titled Kiss the Blood Off My Hands), David Goodis, and others, Swierczynski (The Blonde) this last Monday quoted from Horace McCoy’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1935):

“I lay there, thinking about the sunset, trying to remember what color it was. I don’t mean the red, I mean the other shades. Once or twice I almost remembered; it was like a name you once had known but now had forgotten, whose size and letters and cadence you remembered but could not quite assemble. Through the legs of my cot I could feel the ocean quivering against the pilings below. It rose and fell, rose and fell, went out and came back, went out and came back ... I was glad when the siren blew, waking us up, calling us back to the floor.”

Keep those Monday shots of the dark coming, Duane.