David Goodis – författare

Once upon a time Eddie played concert piano to reverent audiences at Carnegie Hall. Now he bangs out honky-tonk for drunks in a dive in Philadelphia. But then two people walk into Eddie's life--the first promising Eddie a future, the other dragging him back into a treacherous past.Shoot the Piano Player is a bittersweet and nerve-racking exploration of different kinds of loyalty: the kind a man owes his family, no matter how bad that family is; the kind a man owes a woman; and, ultimately, the loyalty he owes himself. The result is a moody thriller that, like the best hard-boiled fiction, carries a moral depth charge.

In David Goodis's bruising crime novel The Secret Squad, Corey Bradford is on the skids and on a quick trip to boozeland. He was a plainclothes cop who got caught with his hands in pockets where they didn't belong and he was pushed out the precinct door. But he was still just as fast with his mitts as he was his wits, and others took notice. Such as mob kingpin Walter Grogan, a man who didn't take no for an answer. But Bradford is also recruited by the notorious Night Squad, a secret arm of the police that doesn't knock before entering. And they don't take no for an answer either. Originally titled The Night Squad, this vintage noir page-turner features flying fists, smoking barrels, lipsticked blondes, and a very bad part of town called the Swamp. All told in Goodis's carbon steel prose and featuring the evocative illustrations of Martha Kelly.

For the first time, the best work of a distinctive master of American noir is available in authoritative e-book editions from The Library of America. David Goodis experienced a brief celebrity when his novel Dark Passage (1946) became the basis for a popular movie starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. The story of a man railroaded for his wife’s murder and forced to assume a different identity after escaping from prison becomes in Goodis’s hands a lyrical evocation of urban fear and loneliness. Other David Goodis novels available as Library of America E-Book Classics include: Nightfall, The Burglar, The Moon in the Gutter, and Street of No Return.

For the first time, the best work of a distinctive master of American noir is available in authoritative e-book editions from The Library of America. In Nightfall (1947), David Goodis explores the theme of the innocent pursued, as artist Jim Vanning becomes accidentally embroiled in a violent robbery and must evade criminals and police alike. Other David Goodis novels available as Library of America E-Book Classics include: Dark Passage, The Burglar, The Moon in the Gutter, and Street of No Return.

For the first time, the best work of a distinctive master of American noir is available in authoritative e-book editions from The Library of America. The Moon in the Gutter (1953) is one of David Goodis’s many tours of the down-and-out neighborhoods of his native city of Philadelphia. William Kerrigan’s pursuit of the riddle of his sister’s death in an obscure alleyway provides the starting point for a tortuous journey into “the darkness of all lost dreams.”  Other David Goodis novels available as Library of America E-Book Classics include: Nightfall, Dark Passage, The Burglar, and Street of No Return.

For the first time, the best work of a distinctive master of American noir is available in authoritative e-book editions from The Library of America. In Street of No Return (1954), David Goodis presents a skid row odyssey in which a famous crooner scarred by violence descends into dereliction. From its opening in the freezing wind of a November street corner through its explosive ending, it is imbued with Goodis’s deep identification with “the unchartered society of the homeless and the hopeless.” Other David Goodis novels available as Library of America E-Book Classics include: Nightfall, Dark Passage, The Moon in the Gutter, and The Burglar.

Hailed as one of Goodis’s best works, this is a gripping crime novel about a disgraced airline pilot who has sunk to the lower depths of existence. Disaster trails the forlorn Cassidy like a hellhound. His self-destructive pattern results not only in self-torment but drags two women, Mildred and Doris, down into the gutter with him. Set in the hard streets of Philadelphia, Goodis’s home ground, Cassidy’s Girl entails blackmail, murder and the usual rough stuff, endowing his icy streets and wretched shanties with expressionistic intensity.“Goodis’s characters are...bad-dream Bogarts on the far ledge of existence...A strange world where...there are only two kinds of people...the wounded and the slain.”—Mike Wallington“David Goodis is the mystery man of hardboiled fiction.”—Geoffrey O’Brien“Action and thrills!”—San Francisco Call-Bulletin

La llum de la lluna il·lumina cada nit les taques de sang resseca sobre l''asfalt del carreró que fa cantonada amb Vernon Street. William Kerrigan somniava una altra vida lluny de l''infern per a Catherine, la seva germana, i per a ell mateix. Ara, la Catherine ja no hi és i ell ha conegut la Loretta Channing, que amb el seu MG fa de turista pels baixos fons. S''enamoren perdudament, però la maledicció de Vernon Street s''estén sobre els amants…«Una ambigua història onírica i fatalista de personatges perduts en un laberint. Tota una crònica d''un amor impossible personificat per Loretta als molls de Filadèlfia, a Vernon Street, on no hi ha espai per a l''esperança, ni redempció per a l''estibador William Kerrigan ni justícia per a la seva germana Catherine. Un carreró de somnis perduts en què cada nit la lluna reflecteix una taca de sang resseca sobre l''asfalt, que recorda als seus habitants la impossibilitat de sortir-se''n i on l''únic consol és al cul d''una ampolla».