World of the Weird, Part II

(The opening post in this series can be found here.) I first came to Dave Zeltserman’s self-styled “dark crime fiction” through Small Crimes, his 2008 breakthrough novel. I initially thought that the “dark” was a reference to the kind of noir crime fiction associated with Jim Thompson, James M. Cain, and many others. But Zeltserman has a penchant for going beyond conventional crime fiction and introducing supernatural elements (of varying degrees) into much of his writing. Bad Thoughts (Five Star, 2007) is perhaps the most dramatic example thus far of Zeltserman’s technique. I was quite disappointed when I initially read the novel, which is a slicker, more stylish version of his earlier Fast Lane (Point Blank, 2004). Like Fast Lane, Bad Thoughts uses the device of the detective as a potentially unwitting killer--hunting himself, in effect--a fascinating concept that dates back to Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), Edgar Allan Poe’s The Man of the Crowd (1840), and perhaps beyond. Zeltserman uses his protagonist’s blackouts to create plausibility, but there is a supernatural component in the denouement and I felt that he had “cheated,” though I couldn’t justify my reason. Then, earlier this year I was trying to improve my understanding of the speculative-fiction genre, and I read Orson Scott Card’s How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy (Writer’s Digest, 2008). Card pointed out that it is essential for any writer in either genre to establish the rules and possibilities of his or her fictional universe as quickly as possible. I realized that this was exactly what had bothered me about Bad Thoughts. Putting the crime-horror crossover in perspective, however, I remembered William Hjortsberg’s classic--and incredibly underrated--Falling Angel (first published in 1978 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, filmed in 1987 as Angel Heart, and currently out of print). It’s very difficult to write about Hjortsberg’s book without giving away the ending, so please skip the next paragraph if you haven’t read Falling Angel yet, or at least seen the film ... Stephen King once said of the novel: “Terrific ... One of a kind ... I’ve never read anything remotely like it.” Falling Angel is a hard-boiled detective story set in New York City in 1959, and the plot follows private eye Harry Angel’s attempt to track down a missing wartime crooner named Johnny Favorite for a rather creepy gentleman called Louis Cyphre. There is an eerie and unsettling atmosphere as Angel learns that Favorite wasn’t a very nice chap at all, even if he was a very successful singer. Angel’s investigation soon degenerates into a series of murders, with everyone he interviews ending up dead. As a reader, one forms the impression that Hjortsberg is pushing himself into a corner and that there’s no way he’s going to be able to explain everything without stretching our suspension of disbelief. He does: we learn that Favorite attempted to renege on a deal with the devil, and the conclusion reveals that it is actually the devil (in the form of Cyphre) who has hired Angel to find Favorite. There is a further twist which I won’t give away here in case you’ve read this paragraph by accident ... So, basically, Falling Angel begins (and arguably even ends) as a mystery; the supernatural elements don’t alter the fact that it is a hard-boiled detective story in the vein of Hammett and Chandler. When I reconsidered its structure and why it worked so well, I thought that maybe Card’s comments weren’t applicable to crime stories with supernatural themes or elements, and returned to Bad Thoughts. The second time around, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book, which I can recommend to anyone who delights in exploring that murky literary ground where horror and crime meet. Zeltserman’s sequel to Bad Thoughts, entitled Bad Karma, is due for publication in November, and I’ll be looking at the contrast between the two novels next time. (To be continued)