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.
Film
Books that are closely related to a film. Whether they are adaptations of a film, have been adapted into a film, or are extensions of a film, they can be found here.
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’?
Crime Novels American Noir of the 1950s
Here we are moving away from looming dread of war and toward the disillusionment of what was waiting for those that returned from overseas.
Crime Novels of the 1930s and 1940s
For July, I’m going to take a deep dive into American crime noir novels from the 1930s to 1960s, give them a bit of context, and maybe mention a film or two along the way.
Eve’s Hollywood
A collection of shorter pieces, and longer prose, all of the writing is connected by Babitz’s love for Southern California’s most famous city and its environs.
Native Son
There are many reasons you should read this book, the primary one being that this novel became one of the first to successfully and comprehensively discuss systemic racism and how it affects Black youth and the Black population in general.
All Quiet on the Western Front
All Quiet on the Western Front is given from the perspective of the losing side, which is still rare when it comes to war literature, especially in translation and from this era.
Blood on Satan’s Claw
This book may have been published just last year, but the writer, Robert Wynne-Simmons, is actually the screenwriter for the 1971 British horror film of the same name. So this book is a novelization of a movie that is over fifty years old.
A Raisin in the Sun
Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun is a classic and compelling play centering around one poor Black family struggling to get ahead in 1950s Chicago.
Notes of a Native Son
Every essay is a painstakingly, achingly beautiful construction of argument. From word choice to phrasing, he has a way of driving to the point, but also doing so with a biting simplicity.