“Two men racing forward to collide like a knockout punch. A razor-edged story of revenge, redemption and what happens when you confront the ghosts of the past.”

One Too Many Blows to the Head, feels like a long-lost pulp you find in a favorite bookstore. A delicious mix of classic hard-boiled grit and the heart-heavy world of film noir, it’s a one-sitting read that sends you back to a lost time of fight halls, Chicago boys and last chances.
-Megan Abbott, author of Bury Me Deep and Queenpin

The last time I won anything was 40 years ago when as teenager I won a vinyl LP from a music magazine. Yesterday I broke that long-running streak and won a copy of a just released noir novel – One Too Many Blows to the Head by Eric Beetner and JB Kohl – courtesy of  the authors and DeeDee of  Noirish City blog at a competition hosted by Sam Juliano’s Wonders in the Dark.   The story is set in 1939 in Kansas City. Ray Ward  is out to settle his brother’s killing in a boxing bout, and his hunt takes Ray down into the dark netherland of  the Kansas City night.  PI Dean Fokoli battling his own demons is also on the killer’s trail. I will post a review at FilmsNoit.Net soonest.

You can get the book on Amazon for only US$13.95: One Too Many Blows to the Head

Eric Beetner is a writer and film-maker from LA, who also is also a staff writer for the Noir City Sentinel, the news letter of the Film Noir Foundation. Co-author J.B.Kohl is an avid reader of all fiction, especially noir. She began writing professionally in 2006. Her first book was, The Deputy’s Widow.

Eric Beetner has produced a very classy trailer for the book and it certainly has me excited to get hold of my copy:

Las Vegas Shakedown (1955)
“PUSHOVERS…They tried to escape their destiny, but the odds were against them!
GUNSELS…Trigger-happy, they believed in making every bullet count…it might be their last!“

Call Northside 777 (1948)
Director Henry Hathaway | DP Joe MacDonald

Newspaper noir…

The Sniper (1952)
Director Edward Dmytryk | DP Burnett Guffey
The pathology and anger of a sharp-shooting psychopath on a killing-spree explored with chilling veracity.

Endless Desire (Hateshinaki yokubo 1958 Japan)
Director Shohei Imamura | DP Joji Ohara

Dark satire on greed punished by relentless fate. Bravura direction and cinematography, with hip 50s jazz score.

36 Quai des Orfèvres (France 2004)
Director Olivier Marchal|DP Denis Rouden

Paris hip, dark, and mean.

A long overdue fourth edition of  Film Noir: An Encyclopaedic Reference to the American Style co-edited by Alain Silver, Elizabeth Ward, James Ursini, and Robert Porfirio (3rd Edition 1992) is slated for April 2010 and can be pre-ordered for US$26.40 from Amazon. This classic reference has been completely revised, expanded, redesigned, and retitled The Film Noir Encyclopedia.

I have found the third edition an invaluable reference on American film noir and neo-noir, though the authors’ insistence that film noir is a purely US phenomenon leaves some large gaps.  Alain Silver’s reviews are superior to those of the other editors and can be wonderfully enlightening. I hope two common weaknesses in the previous editions, significant errors in plot outlines and pedestrian and over-blown reviews by some co-editors, will be remedied in the new edition.