Tag: hardboiled fiction

Dirty Air — Book Review

The Razzman is back! And I’m one happy camper.

The older I get the more I find myself reaching for a private detective mystery or a horror story for my reading entertainment.

In the broad crime fiction category, cozy mysteries, thrillers, and serial killers are all the rage. The lone gumshoe, relying on observation and ratiocination, has been more or less put out to pasture.

Which is a crying shame. The murder-solving shamus has been a staple of crime fiction ever since Sherlock Holmes walked on stage and popularized the genre.

Now, Holmes never called himself a private detective. He was a consulting detective. But not too many years passed before the moniker “private” was attached to detective in order to distinguish him from the “public” variety found in the police force.

From the late 1800s through the 1950s the private sleuth was king of the mystery and crime fiction roost. But that began to change in the 1960s as thrills and spills began to be more important then good old-fashioned deductive reasoning.

Today, the thriller is hot and the amateur sleuth of the cozy has replaced the private eye.

However, if you are like me and you prefer your sleuths to be of the private gumshoe variety, then I have good news for you: Joe Congel has published a new Tony Razzolito mystery.

Razzolito, aka the Razzman, is a modern-day gumshoe. He uses information sources, observation, and deductive reasoning to get the job done. There is an air of the hardboiled detective about him, but without the nihilism or pessimism usually associated with the hardboiled detective.

Joe Congel has, in effect, contemporized the hardboiled detective — and Tony Razzolito is the result.

Dirty Air is the third novel in the series. There is also a collection of short stories that fits between books one and two and provides a transition between the events of the first and second books.

Dirty Air is set against a backdrop of NASCAR and illegal street racing. Congel deftly gives you enough of a feel for the racing world without giving you information overload.

A NASCAR driver is murdered (or is he?) And his wife hires Tony and his partner Scott to investigate his death. From that point on, there are twists and turns, thrills and spills, evidence gathering, and deductive reasoning. In other words, a rollicking good mystery.

The central crime busting trio is comprised of Tony and his partner, Scott, and their buddy, Vinnie. The characters are colorful and easy to relate to. The minor characters are also living, breathing people. All of which makes for a very fun series.

Another aspect of Congel’s writing that I appreciate is the realistic pacing. The action continues to ratchet up as the book progresses, as the plot thickens.

Dirty Air, and all of the series, are highly recommended. Check out Joe Congel’s Amazon page — you don’t want to miss this action.

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy reading!

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The Hardboiled Detective

I just finished reading Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely. I’ve previously read his The Big Sleep, and several of his novelettes.

Way in the past, I read Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon and a few of his Continental Op stories.

My opinion of hardboiled fiction is that I like it and want to read more. In fact, I like it so much I may decide to write some of my own.

There’s a lot of confusion between hardboiled and noir. Some people think the two are the same thing, but they are not. I actually see them as being something of opposites.

Noir is about victims and everyone loses in the end. It’s pretty nihilistic.

Hardboiled is about the detective hero, and in the end he wins. The victory may be small, but he still wins.

In a sense, Noir and Hardboiled are the two sides of existentialist philosophy. The one which says life has no meaning, no purpose, and it’s probably best if we just die. And the other, which says life is meaningless in and of itself, and we have to give it meaning. In other words, we find our own meaning and value in life and that’s what makes it meaningful to us.

Let’s look a little deeper at the characteristics of the hardboiled detective.

The hardboiled detective sub-genre was created by Carrol John Daly in the 1920s, and was refined by Dashiell Hammett. It was raised to the level of fine literature by Raymond Chandler, and given an unparalleled psychological depth by Ross Macdonald.

In the hardboiled world

      • the private investigator is the hero
      • he acts tough, talks tough, and often is tough
      • the PI is a loner
      • he has a code of honor and justice that is moral, if not strictly legal
      • no matter what, the PI won’t give up the case, or betray a client
      • individuals battle a corrupt political organization, or a criminal one — it’s the one agains the many
      • the PI prevails because he’s true to himself and his code
      • he’s a smart-aleck, and talks that way
      • he’s cynical about the world at large
      • even though the PI solved the case, the solution does little to alter the larger picture of political, societal, and human corruption
      • the PI wins a small victory, and that’s all he can hope for, but he was true to himself

I think the hardboiled worldview is very apropos for today. There is so much crap going on in the world that one can easily despair, or become insanely angry.

What the hardboiled detective teaches us is that the world ain’t gonna change — but we can rise a little bit above the dirt, the corruption, the wickedness by being true to ourselves, and by sticking to a standard of right and wrong no matter what.

The personal integrity of the individual honoring his word and sticking to his moral principles — no matter what’s going on around him — is, for me, a source of inspiration. Because, it means, no matter how hopeless things are or seem to be, in a small way I can make a difference.

What I do may not change the world, but it may help someone, it may bring peace of mind, or a bit of fairness to someone else’s life. And, realistically speaking, that is probably all we can ever hope for.

The hardboiled world is dark and grim, and slightly dystopian. It’s a world where the big forces crush the little people. And it’s a world where the PI keeps the hope of fairness, equity, and justice alive.

Every day we read of political corruption, corporate corruption, of society’s indifference, of people making money from destroying the environment, and from using other people.

The hardboiled PI shows us that we, as individuals, can keep the goodness that is in humanity alive.

And I like that.

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy reading!

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