Backfire: A Classic Noir Crime Novel - Hardcover

by Dan Marlowe (Author)

A cop in love with his partner's wife, an unauthorized stakeout, and one dead officer: Backfire is lean, hard-edged crime fiction built on guilt, desire, and a fatal mistake. Marty Donovan is already in dangerous territory before the shooting starts. His feelings for Lenore, his partner's wife, have pulled him into emotional compromise, and the off-the-books attempt to crack a stubborn case only tightens the trap. When the stakeout goes wrong and his partner is killed, Marty is left with a crime to solve, a secret to protect, and a life that is closing in around him.

Dan J. Marlowe gives the story the stripped-down force of classic noir: compromised motives, bad decisions, police pressure, sexual tension, and the grim knowledge that one lie usually demands another. Marty's attempt to find the killer becomes inseparable from his own fear of exposure, turning the investigation into a study of panic, loyalty, corruption, and self-preservation. The result is a swift, unsentimental crime novel in which justice is never clean and every choice carries a cost.

First published in 1961, Backfire stands near the turning point between Marlowe's early crime work and the darker, more ruthless reputation he would secure with The Name of the Game Is Death. This Black Curtain Books edition is suited to readers of vintage noir, hard-boiled crime fiction, police suspense, paperback originals, mid-century American crime novels, and stories where the real danger begins after the first bad decision.