Bodies Are Dust by PJ Wolfson (1931). This gritty nonagenarian masterpiece still provokes a sharp intake of breath with its bleak realism. A portrait of unrelenting corruption and abuse of power that must have shocked readers on its original release. Wolfson raised hackles with the novel’s frankness and his scorn for hypocrisy, the veneer of respectability and society’s sacred cows. You can trace a line from this to Lawrence Block’s nihilistic 2020 thriller Dead Girl Blues. Bodies of Dust was also an influence on politically motivated crime fiction over the decades that followed its publication. This is the kind of noir that never made it to the silver screen – way too cynical, too honest about abuse in public office and sexually forthright enough to cause Hays to blow a gasket. Wolfson’s view of the world is dark, uncompromising and unfiltered. This tale isn’t about a bad apple spoiling the batch, the whole orchard is rotten. Bodies are Dust is about a town where it’s only the narcissists, users, the greedy and the perverse that make it to the top. Life here is a bare knuckle fight with the fix in and that’s because the law is every bit as dangerous and dirty as the criminals. Although not overtly political this is a novel proud of its working class roots and rabidly anti-establishment to boot, oozing empathy for the downtrodden and angry at society’s iniquity. Ironically, as it attacks the accepted model of the American way of life, like a lot of the best art of the time government grants for the publisher indirectly led to this book seeing the light of day. Wolfson did became a communist in later life and intriguingly directed a film called Boy Slaves in 1939 about the collusion between state prison authorities and slavers to use reform school boys as free labour.
Inspector Buck Safiotte transferred to his new post in the spring, though it didn’t feel much like it was spring. Ice and frost in patches on the streets and what wasn’t frozen was muddy, made worse by laden horse drawn wagons. Wolfson’s descriptions reminds us how close to the era of the western this still is. Buck got friendly with girls in the brothels early in life and never did pause his fascination from then on. So high on the agenda for his new job is checking out the local call-houses, it’s even better when free or cheap, being an inspector has some sway. Buck got this new job as a result of the election, his party won, hence his promotion to the rank of inspector. Still Buck is ambitious, he wanted to be commissioner, it’s a sore point. His new station house is in a good district, rich pickings to be had; speakeasies, ‘day-hotels’, plenty of ‘sporting-women’ around the theatres, gamblers and dope peddlers – cash cows all. Myra keeps house for Buck, she’s more to him behind closed doors but that doesn’t moderate his behaviour. Myra’s an unfortunate woman, an unmarried mother but she cares for Buck and works hard for her child’s future. Buck is ill, he’s in pain but he keeps putting off seeing the doctor. When Myra encourages him to get it seen to he dismisses her concern, it’s not her business to tell him what to do. The local bank manager wants Buck to close his account and withdraw all his money, Father MacLaughlin is behind it, a morality drive, everyone knows where the inspector’s nest egg comes from and it’s not his paycheck. Buck is scornful, he’s no respecter of religion, a man is a man, cloth or no. Sure, his money is dirty but it’s never stopped MacLaughlin accepting donations in the past and it won’t in the future.
Buck is always looking for a cut of any new action in his part of town. He squeezes a couple of dope dealers and gets wind of a fight fixing racket. There are two big players, Stein and Wallace. Wallace likes young girls, maybe that’s something Buck should care about but he’s more interested in his cut. Double cross, blackmail, murder, suicide, pain and a well of sorrow follow.
Plenty of hard edged banter, muscular prose and clever riffing on jazz melancholy in this cruel and poignant tale. The denouement is blistering and devastating. PJ (Pinkus Jacob) Wolfson matches James M Cain for raw emotional power, this is noir that puts an end to the scientific debate about whether absolute black exists – this is it, despair that rings so true it hurts. Bodies are Dust Is the first offering from Staccato, a new imprint from Stark House Press. This is a jazz age pulp previously out of print for over sixty years. Hopefully, other rare and obscure titles deserving of a modern audience will follow. Staccato, paperback, ISBN 9781951473471, out now.
The Old Man’s Place by John Sanford Sanford, not to be confused with contemporary thriller writer John Sandford, was a writer of hard edged noirs that bristle with tension and the threat of violence, when that is unleashed it’s brutal and shocking. Sanford’s real name was Shapiro but that was considered too Jewish by the publisher so it was changed. The Old Man’s Place was released in 1935 and the novel was a big enough hit to get Sanford noticed in LA. He was courted by Hollywood but his career as a scriptwriter never really took off. Although it worked out personally because he married one of the most successful screenwriters in Tinsel-town, Marguerite Roberts. Jack Mearns explains in the introduction that that gave him the freedom to continue to write his books away from strictly commercial concerns.
Sanford let’s us know the territory we’re in right off the bat, creating a frisson in the opening scene set in a dockside bar in 1920. The tension is portentous, violence bubbles under, not quite breaking out, but it’s only a matter of time. Three WWI veterans, battered by the experience of war have been denuded of any remaining vestige of their better angels. These men are busted and damaged and have a voracious appetite for trouble, a scatter gun ferocity and nowhere to belong. Cut adrift on their return from the war the one remaining thing they have is each other and that’s no comfort to any one of them. The three are the last drinkers in the waterfront saloon, James Pilgrim, Martin Flood and Trubee Pell. All with their chip on the shoulder mentality, angry at the world, and displaying a sense of entitlement. Pilgrim figured early that respect has to be earned but it’s harder to find and gets dirtier with every knock back. In 1917 Pilgrim went straight from gaol to the army, it seemed like a way out, a fresh start, but he was just a glorified stable boy in France. Flood is strong, built like an ‘inverted steeple’, he comes from farmer stock, any thoughts of going back to the old life died on the battlefields and in the arms of the French girls he treated badly. Pell is the youngest, a loner, brought up by his father after his mother died in child birth. He was taught to respect the land, but always felt smothered. He married to get away from his father and, without much thought, left his wife for the war. These guys are cold, resentful and looking for trouble.
The trio wind their way across America to the Adirondacks, to the Pell farm. It’s not long before the old man Walter Pell is a prisoner of the gang, he gets no compassion from his son, Trubee. They leave, pull a job and then retreat back to the farm to hide out. They drink, wreck the place, abuse the old man’s hospitality. Then an advert leads them to a mail order bride service, Pell wants a wife. Anna Wayne steps out of the frying pan into the flaming depths of hell. Thwarted in love, a naive girl, sick of skivvying for her father, being a mom replacement, and feeling like she was little more than property leaves her home for the Pell farm. The tension mounts as jealousy, lust, old resentments and betrayal outs. It’s not long before the violence erupts and the men are at each others throats. Is there are drop of familial feeling, love or loyalty to be had on the Pell farm?
Another stark portrait of humanity at its lowest ebb and a menacing atmosphere pervades the novel. This is ice cold, easily as brutal as the best passages of Cain or Hemingway. Brash Books paperback ISBN 9781735851730, out now.
Make My Bed in Hell by John Sanford No relief from the cynicism here either. Aaron Platt is a farmer, again we’re in the Adirondacks. Like every day, he wakes for a 5am start, even in the depths of winter. When he leaves the farm house for the day’s chores he sees a trail of blood in the snow leading to the barn. Inside there’s a man lying on the hay in one of the horse bays. Platt tugs at him, the figure stirs briefly but collapses back, sick or frozen or drunk or maybe a bit of all three. Platt just leaves him there and heads down to the cowshed to carry on with his day. But something inside Platt has been triggered, he recognised the man, it’s Paulhan, he heads back in the house and enters a sealed room for the first time in sixteen years, cracking the rusted, frozen lock on the door. The room is full of reminders of his long dead family. Platt looks at the family record book of dates and events, it lists his parents and five siblings, Aaron is the only survivor. How does this connect to Paulhan in the barn? Why has his arrival brought Platt back to his troubled family past? Aaron’s last entry in 1923 reporting the death of his father and reads: ‘nogood sonofabitch’. Back in the barn Platt asks Paulhan why he’s showed up after so long? The two men row, the secrets they share are devastating.
Later at the inquest of Paulhan Jessup questioned Platt about how cold it was that day in the barn. The answer is; ‘cold enough to freeze the snot in your nose.’ He admits it was even colder where Paulhan was lying than where he was working, the man only had his clothes for warmth. Platt is pretty matter of fact, he couldn’t properly wake Paulhan so he just went about his business before eventually coming back.
Jessup accuses Platt of beating around the bush in his testimony but Platt wants to tell his story so that what happened is fully understood, starting with his childhood and the history between him and Paulhan. For him this isn’t just about Paulhan’s death and deep down the town knows that too. The contrast between the fevered memories of the sick Paulhan in the barn and Platt’s dead straight report to the inquest is stark. Platt has his reasons for hating Paulhan and he also hated his bullying tyrannical father and resents the back breaking life he’s led since he’s been on his own, the sense of duty he feels to the farm and to the dead. Whereas Paulhan got to live a different life, he left, shirked his responsibilities and lived what Platt sees as a carefree existence, but it’s brought Paulhan’ to this. The irony that both have suffered, neither’s life having panned out as expected, is lost on each other. Sanford shrouds this story of personal trauma into wider issues of community hypocrisy and turning a blind eye to what was happening on the Platt farm just outside the town of Warrensburg. Encompassing a slice of American history, this is an exposition on how pain festers and corrupts and how it manifests when released. A gritty social commentary and an insightful psychological portrait of damaged individuals. At times Hard to take, deeply poignant, savage and realistic. How is Sanford not better known? There’s an energy and drive to his writing, much copied and often watered down. Brash Books, paperback, ISBN 9781735851723, out now
