Classic Noir

A Manhattan gumshoe pursues a convict to St. Louis, where he gets mixed up in a cop killing and nearly loses his own life at the hands of a B girl.

Charles Allston Collins (1828-1873) was the younger brother of the novelist Wilkie Collins, and was married to Charles Dickens's daughter Kate. He is well known both as a painter and a novelist. In The Tête Noire, he describes a racy tale of a commercial traveler and his dog who stayed at a most disreputable French coaching inn, whose landlord would appear to be a cunning criminal, and his young daughter just as wicked.

"Mi hanno chiamato pazzo; ma nessuno ancora ha potuto stabilire se la pazzia sia o non sia la più elevata forma d'intelligenza, se la maggior parte di ciò che è glorioso, se tutto ciò che è profondo non derivi da una malattia del pensiero, da umori esaltati della mente a spese dell'intelletto generale." Così parla di se stesso nel 1841: Edgar Allan Poe è considerato il primo scrittore alienato d'America, avendo dovuto lottare per buona parte della vita con problemi finanziari e personali, con l'abuso di alcolici e in seguito sostanze stupefacenti.

The dark strains of madness that permeate many of the works of Edgar Allan Poe make their way through this macabre story. This memorable short story bears a resemblance to Poe's Tell Tale Heart. In both stories guilt leaves a murderer with a singular choice.

17-year-old Johnny Wells was a very handsome young man, and you’d have called him a babe magnet, but I’m afraid they didn’t have that phrase back in 1961. He decided to capitalize on his looks and the response they earned from women, invested in a haircut and a good wardrobe, moved out of his slum apartment and into a budget hotel, and reinvented himself as a gigolo. The life transformed him. He took up reading, became devoted to it, and educated himself. His new contacts provided him with polish and sophistication. He moved to a good hotel, put money in the bank. And then an out-of-...