Lost Classics of Noir: The Big Heat by William P. McGivern BRIAN GREENE

Lost Classics of Noir: The Big Heat by William P. McGivern

BRIAN GREENE FROM THE 
criminal element

I first saw Fritz Lang’s 1953 film noir The Big Heat decades ago, and I just viewed it again this week. This time I watched it immediately after readingWilliam P. McGivern’s novel of the same title. This is the latest in my series of posts where I rave about an underappreciated noir novel while commenting on a better-known film that was made from it. Lang’s big screen feature is, of course, a gem, and one that any fan of film noir should get to know if they don’t already. McGivern’s work of fiction, which originally appeared in the pages of The Saturday Evening Post, then was published as a novel in the same year as the movie’s release, deserves lofty status among those who appreciate hard-edged crime tales as they appear on the printed page.

There’s little difference in the plotline between book and movie, but for present purposes I’ll focus on the story as it is told in the novel. The primary character is Dave Bannion: a sergeant of detectives in a homicide bureau in Philadelphia. Bannion is a big man; much is made of his hulky build in McGivern’s book, whereas he comes across as being of more normal male stature via Glenn Ford’s portrayal of him in the movie. He has a temper that he needs to keep a watch over, to make sure he doesn’t use his great bulk to do bodily harm to others when it’s not warranted. Bannion is a family man, happily married to his good-natured wife and a loving father to their young daughter. He’s also an honest law enforcement agent. In the beginning of the novel (this is not in the movie), some of the detectives on his team are holding a black man on suspicion of a crime, and are ready to work him over physically to sweat a confession out of him; but Bannion feels their grounds for suspecting the man are flimsy (and racially motivated, although that’s only implied in the book), and he tells his boys to let the guy go.

Another aspect of Bannion’s character that is shown in McGivern’s book is the fact that he likes to wind down in the evening with a reading from one of his philosophy books. I like McGivern’s omniscient narrator’s words about this aspect of Bannion’s character:

Bannion read philosophy because it was a relief from the dry and matter-of-fact routine of his own work . . . I read philosophy, he thought, because I’m too weak to stand up against the misery and meaningless heartbreak I run into on the job every day . . . I want to read something which puts sense into life.

And here’s some more on Bannion from the book, words that illustrate what I said before about the detective’s physical build and how he needs to keep control over his use of it:

Bannion’s body was like an engine; he could hook it to a job and it would run all day. He was no body-lover, no beach athlete. He felt an impersonal regard for his strength, as if he were merely a steward whose job was to keep it functioning at par. Bannion had learned that the more able a man is to stop trouble, the less of it he is likely to meet. And he didn’t want trouble, he didn’t want to use his hands on people. When circumstances forced him to, or when his temper jerked him out of control, he inevitably felt disgusted with himself and degraded. He knew the wild streak inside him and had tamed it, or frustrated it rather, by being strong enough to stop trouble before it started.

The story of The Big Heat gets going when a cop from Philly dies, in an apparent act of suicide. Bannion visits the home of the man — Deering in the book and Duncan in the movie — just to pay his respects to the guy’s widow and to make sure there isn’t a possible homicide angle that might need looking into. Deering’s wife tells Bannion that her husband was worried about his health and that this is likely why he killed himself. Bannion leaves the home satisfied that nothing happened here other than a man of the law deciding to end his life.

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