While the average pop culture consumer might view the American crime genres of hard-boiled detective fiction and noir as one and the same, the differences are worth noting. True, there are many elemental overlaps, including an often urban setting, an emphasis on action and violence (or the threat of it), and a thematic view that sees the world in a shadowy, cynical light. But the plot of noir is usually concerned with an innocent or honest character – notably not a detective, as in the hard-boiled genre – who gets caught in a web of criminal temptation or fateful destruction. In film, noir stories were a staple of American cinema in the 1940s and into the '50s, often adapted from novels within the genre (see Double Indemnity [1944] and The Postman Always Rings Twice [1946], both adapted from James M. Cain books).
Nightfall, first published in 1947, is an excellent example of noir fiction from a respected writer in the genre. David Goodis was an aspiring Hollywood screenwriter who the previous year had received success with his moody second novel Dark Passage; he would see this book adapted by director Delmer Daves into a film featuring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. But Goodis stayed busy with his own fiction and script projects, and in 2018 Stark House released a collection of three of his noir stories, each from a different decade: Nightfall is paired with Cassidy's Girl (1951) and the late-period Night Squad from 1961.
What's curious about Nightfall is its bucking of genre conventions even as it stays firmly anchored in a noir world. Certainly the overall plotline aligns perfectly with genre expectations: Jim Vanning is living a life of concealment in New York City, on the run from something in his past. A suave but dangerous criminal is looking for him, and a police detective named Fraser already has Vanning under surveillance. Soon the reader learns of a three-man bank robbery a few months ago in Seattle and a missing suitcase filled with cash, and we start to see why Jim Vanning might be the reluctant center of attention.
With this archetypal noir situation in place, Goodis pushes his characters and prose to go beyond the predictable. One effective example is that the author spends just as much time crafting detective Fraser's personality and worldview as he does the hunted criminal's. This is an atypical and very successful choice, as it simultaneously humanizes the conventional cop character and raises the stakes for all involved: Fraser feels like something is not right with the picture, and wants to give Vanning the chance to acquit himself if somehow he is innocent. But doing so places pressure on the detective, whose superiors are expecting a swift arrest and tidy resolution.
What's curious about Nightfall is its bucking of genre conventions even as it stays firmly anchored in a noir world. Certainly the overall plotline aligns perfectly with genre expectations: Jim Vanning is living a life of concealment in New York City, on the run from something in his past. A suave but dangerous criminal is looking for him, and a police detective named Fraser already has Vanning under surveillance. Soon the reader learns of a three-man bank robbery a few months ago in Seattle and a missing suitcase filled with cash, and we start to see why Jim Vanning might be the reluctant center of attention.
With this archetypal noir situation in place, Goodis pushes his characters and prose to go beyond the predictable. One effective example is that the author spends just as much time crafting detective Fraser's personality and worldview as he does the hunted criminal's. This is an atypical and very successful choice, as it simultaneously humanizes the conventional cop character and raises the stakes for all involved: Fraser feels like something is not right with the picture, and wants to give Vanning the chance to acquit himself if somehow he is innocent. But doing so places pressure on the detective, whose superiors are expecting a swift arrest and tidy resolution.
Vanning is given a noir-esque love interest, an empathetic ally named Martha, and Goodis keeps the reader (and the protagonist) guessing over whether the woman can be trusted; some disturbing evidence hints at collusion with John, the Seattle gunman. (It's interesting that the characters we are given the greatest access to, Vanning and Fraser, are referred throughout by their surnames while those whose inner thoughts remain concealed from the reader are allowed first-name familiarity.) Perhaps the most surprising against-the-genre choice Goodis employs in Nightfall is its potential for a comparatively "happy" ending; noir rarely lets its ensnared heroes wriggle out of Fate's trap intact.
Nightfall is far from perfect. There's a critical moment where the bad guys leave Vanning alone in a room with a revolver and the suitcase full of cash whose logic is never satisfactorily explained. Even if it's a set-up, why would the stage need to be set in that way? And there's some lovely sentences Goodis forms from commercial designer Vanning's attention to colors – so unusual for a genre world literally defined in scale tones of black and white – but the thread doesn't really tie to a larger cloth. One sample:
"There were considerable things that made life worth living. Luxurious things, rich, colorful things… There was deep rose against a background of rich tan. There was shining gold. There was blue, a good, definite blue, not bright, not at all watery, but deeply blue. And then the tan again. Healthy tan. And all that added up, and it became Martha."
Still, the prose throughout the short novel shows thought and craft, and Goodis elevates his story from that presumably disposable genre of pulp fiction into something more resonant in terms of literary merit. According to the biographical introduction to the Stark House edition provided by Rick Ollerman, David Goodis himself was a misfit and a restless soul; his tales of misunderstood, luckless loners are well worth finding and exploring.
Nightfall was reprinted in 1953 as The Dark Chase and again in 1954 as Convicted.
Nightfall was reprinted in 1953 as The Dark Chase and again in 1954 as Convicted.
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