100 Books Like Dark City

When I first read this book over twenty years ago, I thought, finally, someone who sees what I see in classic Hollywood films—dynamic and exciting women. She traces American women onscreen: from the flappers of the 1920s (It girl Clara Bow) to the European goddesses Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich to the sultry Mae West in the 1930s, to the fast-talking Dames Barbara Stanwyck, Katharine Hepburn, Carole Lombard, and to Marilyn Monroe and her postwar millionaire-seeking pals.

Her multi-decade analysis contemplates what changed in the 1970s-80s; as American women earned greater equity in real life, their onscreen representation paled compared to their pre-WWII sisters. A quarter into the twenty-first century, female star-driven Hollywood films remain an anomaly. Read this book to find out why it was the inverse more than ninety years ago.

In 1988, a book on film history became an unexpected cultural classic. This book tells how a handful of Jewish immigrants from a very small area of central Europe became Hollywood moguls, effectively creating the screen imagery depicting the American dream.

The moguls’ identity as migrants and marginalized people was crucial to their success. As Gabler writes, precisely because of their striving and desire to belong, a former peddler, cobbler, junk seller, and other impoverished transplants concocted the gilded fantasies of Hollywood’s Golden Age. As a group biography and industrial history of Hollywood illusion, An Empire of Their Own is not usually considered in the same vein as The Power Broker’s bricks-and-mortar history.

Yet, in today’s screen-driven world, the legacy of these early media titans is more obvious than ever. The movie moguls’ quintessentially American story of immigration, success, and reinvention is also a prescient, more fully inclusive history of… show more.

Katharine Hepburn, who worked with George Cukor in a whopping ten films, was known for her strength. She was a strong actor with strong opinions and a strong presence. She went through phases from atypical ingénue to box office poison to megastar.

Learning about her life through Hepburn’s own perspectives in her own words is riveting. She is prickly and poignant, biting and benevolent.

I once played Henry Higgins' mother in a local theatrical production of My Fair Lady. I delighted in the music and in portraying (in a white wig and wrinkled make-up) the stern, wise Mrs. Higgins, even as I also wondered whether Higgins and Pickering were perhaps secretly a couple and if Eliza was asexual.

This made me want to read the play on which My Fair Lady is based, George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. I did not get answers to my somewhat whimsical questions about sexuality, but I did see in even greater relief the turning of women into objects that ambitious, selfish men may do.

Until I read Wasson’s provocative book, it was my understanding that Robert Towne crafted his Oscar-winning Chinatown script with guidance from his star (Jack Nicholson), producer (Robert Evans), and director (Roman Polanski), all of whom urged Towne to find a cogent narrative inside a sprawling concept embedded with powerful metaphors.

Then Wasson debunked the romantic myth of the genius scribe working in isolation by revealing not just the extent of Polanski’s notes but, even more explosively, the involvement of Edward Taylor as Towne’s “editor” and possible uncredited co-writer. I didn’t think it was possible for me to be shocked anymore by discoveries about my chosen field, but Wasson’s book reminded me that solo screenwriting credits are, at best, abstractions and, at worst, misnomers.

Another Jim Thompson classic, The Grifters is about a trio of con artists trying to move up from being small-time crooks. They add love and a mother/son relationship into the mix which only makes things worse. The film directed by Stephen Frears is a master-class in acting from Anjelica Huston, Annette Bening, and John Cusak. The scene at the end couldn’t be more shocking as a way to wrap up a noir film. Money is paramount in the world of the grifters, everything else secondary. What could be more noir than that?

I love books that mash up genres and Dan Will has done just that with this first offering in his Arcane Casebook series. His hero, Alexander Lockerby, is a man after my own heart—a noir detective through and through. Only this fedora-wearing gumshoe has a little extra zing up his sleeve—magic. He’s a runewright, and while I have to admit I didn’t know what that was when I began the book, it became perfectly clear by the end. I won’t ruin it for you, but suffice it to say, it’s aces with the noir genre—a man gifted with certain talents, but not ones enough to gain him the easy life. This story starts out simple, but takes little time to grab you by the collar and slap you across the kisser. And the good news? There are eight more to keep it company. 

I have loved this novel since first reading it in college—probably when I should have been studying for exams! 

Double Indemnity is one of the first and best American noir novels and served as the basis for the 1944 film by the same name. The novel taught me about the classic noir trap: a basically good but flawed man helps a basically bad but attractive woman in an effort to murder her husband, the good/flawed man hoping to end up with both the woman and the money.

But things seem fated to go wrong, and what starts out as a bleak tale ends up even bleaker—at the dark end of a one-way street. Since reading this powerful novel—and seeing the equally powerful film with its crackling dialogue by famed hardboiled crime writer Raymond Chandler—I have never looked at life quite the same way again.

Author Louise Doughty's books demonstrate that psychological suspense and crime novels can be literary fiction. Platform Seven is well-written but opens in a location that’s anything but inspiring – Peterborough railway station. What could possibly happen here? But we’re soon drawn into the isolation and menacing sense that it’s something very bad indeed. This novel could be called a ‘genre splice’ – part domestic noir and part ghost story. Doughty’s genius is laying the breadcrumb trail of clues to keep the reader turning the pages and staying ahead of Lisa, the main character. She seems to be unaware of what’s really going on, or perhaps chooses to ignore the signs. An emotional story with a theme of coercive behaviour for book clubs to discuss. 

A treasure trove of noir short fiction, an impressive anthology of  American greed, crime, and comeuppance by some of the genre’s greatest authors including Mickey Spillane, Evan Hunter, Elmore Leonard, Patricia Highsmith, Joyce Carol Oates, Dennis Lehane, Cornell Woolrich, and editor Ellroy. The 39 selected stories are a feast of excellence, a wide-ranging buffet of tasty tales from 1923 to 2007—makes me drool just thinking about a re-read.