No Good from a Corpse

Rating:
Summary: "No Good" Is Great; The Rest Cannot Quite Match Up.
Review: I began this review months ago, I really did, just after I began reading this compilation. It stirred me so much that I could barely wait for the next page. You see, hard-boiled detective fiction is to me as good as it gets. Not from johnny-come-lately postmodernists typing on laptop computers from houseboats, but the true-blue mean-street 40's dime detective stuff of Hammett and Chandler and Woolrich. But especially Chandler.
I had known of Leigh Brackett from her science fiction contributions, knew she could crack wise with the best of them from her movie scripts such as Rio Lobo (and of course, The Big Sleep). But I had never read any of her noir writing. Desperate for some California crime gothic, I bought this book.
I will say Brackett is the only person I know of to have sections of dialogue as good as Raymond Chandler without slavishly imitating him. I had a smile on my face all the way through the title story. But remember how I said I began this review months ago? It has taken me this long to get through the short stories which follow.
Far from being bad, yet not approaching classic status either, they suffer mostly from lacking a single, distinctive voice. Hammett's Continental Op was an untouchable man speaking in clipped phrases. Chandler had Marlowe and his romantic cynicism as a unifying presence in his canon. The title story of this book had a Marlowe-like character. But the others in No Good From a Corpse are all over the map.
Brackett lacks the pure descriptive power of Chandler; in the last story Brackett spoke of the protagonist's "hard green eyes" what seemed like twenty times. There are also none of the quiet moments when we learn how Marlowe feels, some of his fallen-star philosophy, which are why Chandler's books are novels and these are pulp stories. In place of true feeling are scenes where characters who know one another very well each go on at length about various possibilities, then beat each other senseless. The fights are well done, but it seems a little like Brackett's trying too hard to be too hard-boiled.
With Chandler we could kind of tell who was lying because they clammed. In Brackett stories, the guilty are as likely to offer postulates as the cops. In fact, they likely have a frame-up or two plotted in case their first alibi doesn't take.
When she does try to actually imitate Chandler's style, it doesn't work. Here's an example: Chandler might say a gunsel's shoulder's were "a little narrower than City Hall." Brackett says in this book: "a little narrower- but not quite- than City Hall." It's as if she did not trust her readers to grasp the hyperbole; and when you think about it, hers is the more hyperbolic statement anyway.
What else? Brackett's heroes get beat up. A lot. They seem never to be in control of a situation in the way Marlowe or Spade or the Continental Op or even Hammer were.
These stories also rely on coincidence and happenstance to the point of flabbergasting a reader. Cars crash when they are needed to crash; people fall when they are needed to fall, that sort of thing.
Still, who cares? These are minor quibbles, and I list them only to show why this is deserving of four stars instead of five. This is the genuine article, 40's noir, hard-bitten as it gets, with great titles from a bygone era, like "The Misfortune Teller." Oh, happy happy. If you are a fan I would recommend snapping this up, because who knows how long it will be before these stories see print again?

Rating:
Summary: Unique mystery anthology, by one of the best
Review: Leigh Brackett is best known for her contributions to the science fiction genre, but she was also an accomplished writer of mysteries, most of which are anthologized here for the first time. The dustjack that wraps this book is itself a piece of art; the book is solid, well-crafted and beautifully illustrated. Brackett hits her stride early with the first entry that provides the title to this book. Tight writing, excellent dialogue. All-around well-done product!

Rating:
Summary: Unique mystery anthology, by one of the best
Review: Leigh Brackett is best known for her contributions to the science fiction genre, but she was also an accomplished writer of mysteries, most of which are anthologized here for the first time. The dustjack that wraps this book is itself a piece of art; the book is solid, well-crafted and beautifully illustrated. Brackett hits her stride early with the first entry that provides the title to this book. Tight writing, excellent dialogue. All-around well-done product!