Crime Novels: Thrillers from the 1960s Part 2
As the 1960s began to fade into the 1970s, noir took a fascinating and complex turn. It wasn’t enough to just be about a crime — now it was about being relevant to the current moment.
1964
The year of 1964 CE.
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Crime Novels: Thrillers from the 1960s Part 1
Readers begin to ask the question — what happens when your job is crime? What happens when people decide to make money ‘the easy way’?
Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age
The novel uses its single sentence in a way that makes it an accessible and compelling read. It goes to show that it’s important to see beyond the quirks and give even the weirdest sounding books a chance.
A Very Easy Death
What constitutes an easy death? Or a difficult one? Though her mother’s death was considered ‘easy’ by doctors, it still involved pain, suffering, and turmoil.
Berg
Quin uses vagaries, the mists of the seaside Brighton, and a circularity of language to construct a perfect circular narrative. So perfect, that it’s a magical experience to get to the ending and read how everything comes together.
The Country Girls Trilogy
Though the inside flap copy describes the trilogy as ‘Dickensian’, I have to disagree with that description. There’s a reason these books were censored in Ireland when they were first published and implying that these books have any ‘quaintness’ of tone is really not capturing what O’Brien is attempting to say.
I Am Not Your Negro and Nothing Personal
We happened across Raoul Peck’s film I Am Not Your Negro one February night while flipping through the channels. TVO was airing it as part of its yearly Black History Month’s selections. It’s a film that I would not hesitate to name as essential, and it’s what was responsible for my introduction to James Baldwin’s work.
The Complete Novels of Flann O’Brien
Each novel is a different exploration and comment on Irish culture, but each is written in a style that is uniquely O’Brien’s. He has a talent for bitter, scathing satire that sits in the midst of light, often comic prose.
The Face of Another
To describe Abe’s The Face of Another as a horror novel would only be scratching the surface of what it truly delivers.