I recently read Dark Passage by David Goodis
and really enjoyed it. It is a novel where everything
works. It is plot controlled, but the characters are given just
enough room to be interesting, and the atmosphere vibrates between something
close to despair and almost, but not quite, hope. When I finished I
had the sharp desire to flip back to page one and start again. Instead
I dug out a David Goodis’ short story I read a few years ago titled “The
Plunge” and reread it. It was better this time than the last, and
rather than satisfy my urge to reread Dark Passage, it made the
itch more demanding.
The following review originally appeared in 2009, and be warned
it is a spoiler.
David Goodis is a writer that every hardboiled reader should
know. His work is dark—about as dark as you will ever read—heavy and
literate. It is often difficult to differentiate between the good
and the bad, and the tales are drenched with a self-loathing that gives the
stories a deep and sinister glimpse into the darkness of the human condition.
His short story “The Plunge” is one of his best, and a perfect
example of what Goodis did well—create men who are, for the most part, good and
then twist their world just enough to push them out of bounds into waiting
darkness.
Roy Childers is a clean cop in a corrupt department. He has
risen through the ranks quickly; he is a homicide lieutenant with a bright
future. He has four children and another on the way. His
wife loves him and he seemingly loves his wife, but that isn’t enough for
Roy. He doesn’t consciously understand that he wants more, but he
does.
His world begins its slow descent when a warehouse is taken down
for $15,000. The robber killed one security guard and blinded the
other. It is a trademark Dice Nolan score. Dice is a man whom
Childers has a special connection; they grew up on the same street and Roy has
put him behind bars more than once. Now Childers wants to take Nolan down
one last time, but he isn’t ready for what happens. Nolan has
something Roy wants and it will be his undoing.
“The Plunge” is a brutal story. It chronicles the
unwinding of a man. A man who seemingly has everything. A
man who is better than his end. And a man who should know better. It
is literate and the prose is pitch-perfect:
“Seven out of ten are
slobs; he was thinking. There was no malice or disdain in the
thought. It was more a mixture of pity and regret. And
that made it somewhat sickening, for he was referring specifically to the other
men who wore badges, he fellow-policemen. More specifically he was
thinking of the nine plainclothesmen attached to the Vice Squad. Only
yesterday they’d been caught with their palms out, hauled in before the
Commissioner, and called all sorts of names before they were suspended.”
The story opens in normal enough fashion. The
protagonist is a cop who wants to find a murderer. There is even
something special and personal about this particular criminal, but Mr Goodis
takes the premise and smudges it with his own recipe. He marks it
with weakness and greed. He takes a good and strong man and chops
him down with life, fear, and hunger.
The best part is, he does it all without ever losing his grip on
the story or its impact on the reader. He makes it interesting and
entertaining from beginning to end. He builds a path into darkness
and then shows the reader the way out—a cleansing, but a rather messy and
permanent one.
“The Plunge” originally appeared in Mike Shayne’s Mystery Magazine October 1958. I
read it in A Century of Noir edited by Mickey Spillane and Max
Allan Collins.
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