One expects to encounter the strangest characters in hard-boiled fiction. But where noir really gets going is in the spare prose and crystalline etching of description. Check out James Ellroy's Gravy Train from that tough collection of American noir, Hard-boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories.
My list of duties ran seven pages. I drove to Beverly Hills wishing I'd been born canine.
"Basko" lived in a mansion north of Sunset; Basko wore cashmere sweaters and a custom-designed flea collar that emitted minute amounts of nuclear radiation guaranteed not to harm dogs - a physicist spent three years developing the product. Basko ate prime steak, Beluga caviar, Häagen-Dazs ice cream and Fritos soaked in ketchup. Rats were brought in to sate his blood lust: rodent mayhem every Tuesday morning, a hundred of them let loose in the back yard for Basko to hunt down and destroy. Basko suffered from insomnia and required a unique sedative: a slice of Velveeta cheese melted in a cup of hundred-year-old brandy.
Who would not want such a dog?
1 comments:
a slice of Velveeta cheese melted in a cup of hundred-year-old brandy.
Ellroy, FTW.
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