Freezer Burn – Joe R. Lansdale

Bill Roberts is a redneck. He’s as white trash as they come and lives with his dead mother whom he’s wrapped in garbage bags and doused in perfume to mask the putrid smell of decomposed flesh. Life is good. However, Bill runs out of money when he’s unable to forge his mother’s signature for her disability checks. What could possibly be the best plan of action for Bill? Rob a fireworks stand. A brilliant idea that anyone who lives or visits rural, county areas around the Forth of July can imagine would be great premise for a crime story.

Joe R. Lansdale’s 1999 novel takes a rural crime premise and infuses it with a touch of Tod Browning’s Freaks(1939). Lansdale’s works are a fine example of mashing several genres together forging a new genre that’s both refreshing and unpredictable. The scenario described in the opening paragraph is only the first chapter. The heist goes horribly wrong and Bill winds up chased through the swamps by the police. His cohorts have either both been shot and/or bitten by deadly viper snakes in the marsh. Exhausted, Bill passes out on a dry bank only to find his face supper for an infestation of mosquitoes. Rescued by a travelling entourage of carnival freaks, Bill meets the inhabitants that include the bearded lady, Conrad the Wonder dog-boy, the Siamese twins, and a strange white haired commander of the troupe, named Frost, that has an extra hand growing out of his chest. The motley ensemble of freaks chants “one of us, one of us” in a literary tip of the hat to Browning’s Freaks.

Lansdale uses the familiar tropes of the crime genre to build his narrative and then deliberately steers in another direction. With Bill’s face a swollen mess, the freaks are able to relate with him and a bond forms. Bill agrees to work with the troupe until he recovers, but soon finds his place and continues after his recovery, working and driving the trailers for the carnival on its summer tour of the small Texas towns. Frost lets him stay in the refrigerated camper that houses the main attraction of the carnival: the frozen, mummified corpse of a possible Neanderthal man nicknamed “The Ice Man”. Frost later explains that the frozen corpse was a purchase that included a story explaining its reputed biblical origins of the missing body of Christ while hinting at a supernatural curse that comes with the package.

If that doesn’t have your attention, Lansdale introduces the femme fatale of the piece: Frost’s wife. Gidget’s constantly described in various states of revealing daisy dukes, bra-less midriffs, nighties, and nakedness. She’s captured Bill’s attention from the start, by not only her figure, but also her apparent normalcy. She’s the only member of the carnival troupe that’s not disfigured or deformed. She’s been seduced by Frost’s kindness and accepted his hand in marriage even though she’s revolted by his other hand growing out of his chest. She forces him to wear a glove on it during their frequent lovemaking. Gidget has plans to take over the carnival and knows that the Ice Man attraction is her ticket out.

Here comes the powerhouse James M. Cain noir connection and the pivot point for the novel. Now it is ThePostman Always Rings Twice (1934) meets Freaks. Gidget coerces Bill to do her bidding and murder Frost so that she can take over the carnival. Using her body to control Bill’s thoughts, she’s able to lay out a fiendish plot to mask Frost’s murder as an accident while painting on the carnival’s Ferris wheel. Suspense builds by the planning and the execution of this deed; however, it should be no surprise, and without giving anything away, that something will go wrong.

While no pun intended, these brief plot descriptions are just the tip of the iceberg. Lansdale grabs the reader, shakes them up, and spits them out. What really grabs me is the inability to pinpoint the direction the story is supposed to move. This provides an exciting narrative that constantly offers surprise twists with quite familiar story elements that mixes different genres such as horror and crime. I’m not overly familiar with Lansdale’s work. The film adaptation of his novella Bubba Ho-Tep (2002) being the first that comes to mind and proves that Lansdale’s work defies categorization. Also, the recently filmed Cold in July (2014) adaptation is what attracted me to pull Freezer Burn off my shelf and read it for this blog. I was not disappointed.

Burglar – David Goodis

Steeped in an unwritten honorary thieves’ code, DavidGoodis’ Burglar is a prime example of American noir of the 1950’s. Sitting parked in the dead of night, carefully smoking cigarettes, Nathan Harbin and his band of criminals, prepare a course of action that will unwittingly change the course of their life. Harbin, the brains of the operation, is the expert safe cracker that never carries a gun. Gladden, the only female and barely an adult herself, cases the house on the street and works as a temporary maid, getting the details where the valuables are kept in a wall safe. Baylock and Dohmer surround the house on either side with flashlights in hand to signal any disturbance or unusual activity approaching. Together, the team has managed a dozen hits, but something in the air on this particular night presents more tension than the other jobs.

Published in 1957, Burglar’s tension surmounts when a patrolling police car interrupts the heist. Fortunately, Harbin’s fast thinking in conjunction with the gang’s coolness prevents disaster. The cops are convinced of the cover story and leave the scene. In the course of the robbery, we learn the strengths and weaknesses of each of the key players. Harbin learned his trade by necessity. His mentor was none other than Gladden’s father, killed in a heist gone wrong. Since then, Harbin has taken responsibility of Gladden and lives by a code of ethics of this dead man. Gladden follows Harbin’s every move and there is more behind her willingness to follow him all the way to the life of crime. In Goodis’ world, the thieves’ code is predominantly a male oriented. The characters of Baylock and Dohmer represent this male universe resenting Gladden and finding her to be the weakest link in the gang. However, their animosity fades after a job and Gladden presents herself to the gang members as a more useful human being by making sandwiches and doing housework as opposed to an equal member of the gang.

This is where Goodis sets up the reader to go for a ride. Goodis flips the coin and presents two criminals that work as the villains in the piece. A femme fatale that breaks up the male dominated crime scene and is the exact opposite of Gladden’s character. Della uses her body to seduce Harbin and feigns love to get what she wants. Della works closely with Charley who is a crooked cop that’s ready for a shakedown. Together, they want to get their hands on those precious emeralds. The situation caused by the patrolling police that interrupted the heist at the beginning. Both Harbin and Gladden are sexually frustrated individuals. Not only does Della works on Harbin with her physical appearance, Charley works on Gladden with his physicality and feigned sensitivity. There’s a nice parallel happening between the key characters. It’s a mirrored world where two sides of the criminal underworld co-exist and conflict with each other.

The novel’s bleakness builds throughout each chapter and finally erupts into astonishing and brutal violence made even more shocking by Harbin’s ability to handle it with professional aplomb. For example, when a fatal shootout occurs outside of Nathan’s automobile, Nathan is able to keep his wits about him and dispose of weapons, vehicles, and bodies in a professional manner. The novel contains a coolness that reminds me of the films of Jean-Pierre Melville such as Le Samouraï or La Doulos.

Drowning in darkness, Harbin and Gladden find themselves at the end of the novel in the blackness of the ocean, which is an interesting metaphor for the entire novel. There’s no escape and it only gets darker and darker the further down you go. Burglar is quite a piece of noir fiction and I can’t think of any other crime author that paints in words a bleaker vision.

The author, predominantly known for Dark Passage (1946) adapted into a film version starring Humphrey Bogart, sued for copyright infringement over the TV series The Fugitive. Another celebrated French filmmaker, FrançoisTruffaut, adapted his novel Down There (1956) aka Shoot the Piano Player. Re-appraised and reprinted for the first time in fifty years, The Library of America published Five Noir Novels of the 1950’s in 2012 that includes The Burglar, Dark Passage, Nightfall, The Moon in the Gutter, and Street of No Return.