Brilliant American Crime Thrillers of the Mid-Twentieth Century

by Andrew Diamond
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6 books
The crime thriller genre thrived in the US from the nineteen thirties through the sixties, evolving over time from lurid pulp to richly insightful psychological drama. Some of America’s best writers, many now forgotten, worked in this genre. If you haven’t read them, you’ll be surprised at how the characters can keep you deeply engaged while the stories keep you glued to your seat.
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Black Wings Has My Angel

Elliott Chaze, 2018
Black Wings opens with escaped convict Timothy Sunblade planning a heist that will set him up for life. He needs a partner to pull it off, and he finds one unexpectedly in the tough and steady Virginia, his black-winged angel. The characters in Black Wings are deep, compelling, well drawn, and psychologically complex, even by the standards of the best literary fiction. This book gives you the best of both worlds: the lurid thrill of pulp, and the depth of true, masterful writing.

I Married a Dead Man

Cornell Woolrich, 2024
Through a clever twist of fate, a destitute young woman takes on the identity of a wealthy young bride and then lives in fear of being exposed as her lowlife ex-boyfriend stalks and extorts her. This book is primarily a psychological suspense: a slow, weighty, and relentless act of brutality against the psyche of a good and honest and vulnerable person. It portrays the effects of evil much more powerfully than so much of today’s crime fiction, which simply focuses on acts of physical violence.

Dead Calm

Charles Williams, 2012
John and Rae Ingram are on their honeymoon, sailing across the Pacific towards Tahiti in their private ketch, Saracen. Stuck for days in dead calm, twelve hundred miles from land, they take on a passenger from a sinking yacht who turns out to be a psychopath. Dead Calm excels as both a suspense and action thriller. This may be the tensest book I’ve ever read. Both Rae and John Ingram are infinitely determined and resourceful against all odds.

In a Lonely Place

Dorothy B. Hughes, 2017
This is a brilliant book about a troubled killer by a brilliant writer. Unlike so much contemporary genre fiction in which killers are portrayed as inhuman two-dimensional monsters, Hughes portrays Dix Steele as a human being gone horribly wrong. Though the story is told in the third person, we see the world from the killer’s perspective. We occupy his unsteady mind as he becomes increasingly unhinged, and we see how his actions arise from feelings that most people experience as difficult and uncomfortable but that he experiences as intolerable, torturing, and unresolvable.

The Cocktail Waitress

James M Cain, 2012
The Cocktail Waitress was the last book James M. Cain wrote before he died in 1977. Hard Case Crime editor Charles Ardai pieced it together from a number of manuscripts and published it in 2002. The book, as Ardai says, “is a classic Cain femme fatale story that’s told for once from the femme fatale’s point of view.” And what a point of view it is. The main character, Joan, makes a few bad decisions in her youth, and then spends her twenties working her way out of the hole she’s dug. To the outside world, she appears to be worthy of society’s moral scorn. Inside, she is tough, pragmatic, and morally far superior to those who judge and condemn her.

The Name of the Game is Death / One Endless Hour

Dan J. Marlowe, 2016
This book is a classic among fans of hard-boiled crime fiction. Stephen King called it the hardest of the hard-boiled, and I have to agree with him on that. The plotting is relentless and so is the main character. I’ve never seen a character who so purely embodies animosity and determination. There are twists in almost every chapter, and Marlowe’s ability to describe action is superb. This book has definitely earned its reputation.