The Rhetorizer

After spending a year with scoundrels, schemers and various other losers, we're wrapping up our noir season. We share some noir-themed songs and discuss some of the highlights of our reading list. Jacob's playlist: One Way or Another - Blondie Wicked Game - Chris Isaak Money Money Money - ABBA Kevin's playlist: Psycho - Jack Kittel Goodbye Earl - The Chicks The Girl on Death Row - Lee...

When the Jackson 5 come to town, furniture salesman Ray Carney slips back into the criminal underworld to secure tickets for his daughter. We return to two-time Pulitzer winner Colson Whitehead for the follow up to Harlem Shuffle. Now, it's the 70s, the city is in turmoil, and Ray Carney and his friends are older than ever.

With the arrival of Netflix’s Ripley, we revisit Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel, The Talented Mr. Ripley, about a charming murderer’s European vacation. Hollywood can’t get enough of this scoundrel! What's the deal with that? Plus, Roxane provides the DEFINITIVE list of HOTTEST RIPLEYS. And Kevin gets a lift from Alain Delon’s alleged SECRET LOVE CHILD. TUNE IN to hear it all!!!

A furniture salesman keeps getting pulled into the criminal underworld of 50s and 60s Harlem. It's part heist, part revenge plot and part social satire, filled with characters who don't usually get the spotlight in crime books, like the fence, the ageing muscle, and the crooked banker. Note to you, dear listener: after reading this book, we decided do an episode on its sequel, Crook Manife...

One of science fiction's greatest bastards, Harlan Ellison, brings us a story of a telepath's encounter with a serial killer on death row. The story is called "Mefisto in Onyx." You can find it in The Best American Noir of the Century Anthology.

Worlds collide in this fantastical police procedural that's as much Borges as CSI. A detective who lives in a city that shares physical space with a different city finds himself at the centre of a case that puts him in grave danger, at risk of crossing the shapeless secret police known only as Breach. Our hosts are divided on this one!

Four women who work the night shift at a factory in Tokyo get pulled into the criminal underworld after one of them murders her husband. The most gruesome and bleak novel we've covered this season, Out was first published in Japanese in 1997 and later became Kirino's first book translated into English.

Is it a secret prequel to The Big Lebowski? A "sunshine noir"? The last gasp of New Hollywood? Cutter's Way is a grimy adaptation of Cutter and Bone, starring Jeff Bridges (AKA The Dude) and John Heard (AKA Mr. McCallister) as two dysfunctional lowlifes who get caught up in a blackmail plot. Check out our previous episode, where we talked about the novel Cutter and Bone.

In this overlooked gem of the mid-70s, two aimless losers get involved in a blackmail plot, or maybe a murder plot, or maybe just a paranoid fantasy. A girl is murdered and pretty boy Richard Bone thinks he knows who did it. He doesn’t want to get involved, but his loudmouthed war vet friend Alex Cutter decides they’re going to take the guy down. Unfortunately, they're completely incompetent h...

Is L.A. Confidential a neo noir masterpiece... or a total snooze? Was director Curtis Hanson a hack who got lucky? Or just a hack? Were players like Danny DeVito, Russell Crowe and Kevin Spacey well cast? Or wasted? The hosts are divided in our most contentious episode of the season. Will the pod survive?

Dig it: today we're gabbing about THE James Ellroy's classic neo-noir L.A. Confidential, the tripartite, sybarite, dynamite journey to the dark heart of '50s Los Angeles. Three depraved cops battle over justice, women and pride, as they take on pornographers, murderers... and even members of their own force! Remember, you heard it hear first, on the qt, and extremely hush hush. Referen...

"The Lady Says Die" is a sick, vengeful short story by one of the biggest crime writers of the 20th century and former professional trampoline jumper, Mickey Spillane. References: The Best American Noir of the Century, which contains "The Lady Says Die" Mickey Spillane's obituary - The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2006/jul/19/guardianobituaries.booksobituaries...

An escaped convict and a woman with a mysterious past concoct the perfect scheme: move to the suburbs! We read Elliott Chaze's 1953 novel Black Wings Has My Angel. Thanks to Perfect Books for sponsoring this show.

Hitchcock adds a big dose of tennis, a maniacal carnival scene and a lobster tie to Patricia Highsmith's story in his classic 1951 adaptation of the novel. (editor's note -- here are the show notes Jacob tried to get me to use: "Chekov's protestant, introduced during a previous film adaptation episode, returns and nearly derails noted Papist Alfred Hitchcock's attempt to condu...

A rich man-child with a huge zit takes a special interest in a promising young architect he meets on the train. He shares his dream of the perfect murder: I kill your wife and you kill my daddy. But does he mean it, or is just the scotch talking? And where did the architect leave his copy of Plato's Republic? We read Patricia Highsmith's classic debut novel, Strangers on a Train. Thanks to...

Drop the top on your white Cadillac and crank up the stereo, because on this week's episode, we're discussing Dorothy B. Hughes 1963 political noir, The Expendable Man. There are bad first impressions, and then there's finally meeting the nice doctor you've heard a lot about and been set up with on a date, and he sweatily explains to you that he's being framed for botching the...

A jilted lover confronts war hero Korea Jim. Dorothy B. Hughes titled this story "The Homecoming", but she could have named it "Benny and the Vet." Tune in to find out why! You can read "The Homecoming" in the anthology The Best American Noir of the Century. This episode is sponsored by Perfect Books. Jingle lyrics and arrangement by Jon with an H.

Some say it's the greatest film about insurance ever made. We watched the 1944 adaptation of Double Indemnity, a film largely credited with making the noir genre hot. Created by the daring duo of Billy Wilder in the director’s chair and hardboiled master Raymond Chandler wielding the pen, the film stars Barbara Stanwyck, Fred G. MacMurray, and Edward G. Robinson. A low-budget film with a fract...

An insurance agent is brought low by a bored housewife in a sexy sailor outfit, a big payout for murdering her husband, and the opportunity to outsmart his boss. Does it work out? No. We’re back with another James M. Cain classic: 1943’s Double Indemnity.

Who wore it better: Lana Turner in a turban or Jack Nicholson in a fedora? We dive into film noir with the 2 most famous adaptations of The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946 and 1981). Our sponsor this season is Perfect Books , located at 258 Elgin St in downtown Ottawa. All of the books we're reading this season are available for sale there now. Links to things discussed: Infographic: What mak...

There's a fried cat, a woman who trains pumas, and a murder plot that goes sideways. Our new season explores the gritty world of noir, full of crime, antiheroes and snappy dialogue. We're getting things started with James M. Cain's 1934 debut novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice. Our sponsor this season is Perfect Books, booksellers you can find near the corner of Elgin and Somerset i...

We're back! For season 2, we're diving into the gritty, crushing world of noir. Here's our reading list, so you can read along: The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M Cain Double Indemnity by James M Cain Strangers On A Train by Patricia Highsmith  Black Wings Has My Angel by Elliot Chaze L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy The Expendable Man by Dorothy B Hughes Cutter and Bone by New...

It’s our season finale! We discuss the last book Philip K. Dick wrote, a non-scifi story about a radical bishop. It’s part three of the Valis trilogy: The Transmigration of Timothy Archer. Here’s that end-of-life interview with Philip K. Dick that Kevin references: https://philipdick.com/literary-criticism/frank-views-archive/philip-k-dicks-final-interview/

A woman has to smuggle a god to Earth in her womb in Philip K. Dick's 1981 novel The Divine Invasion. The pink beam of light from VALIS reappears, as a cast of characters including the prophet Elijah, a stinky goat and a folk singer navigate multiple realities.

Horselover Fat experiences a religious awakening when he’s hit by a beam of pink light. Fat's quest for meaning is populated with rockstars, a godlike toddler, his buddy's dead cat, and Philip K. Dick himself. Rooted in Philip K. Dick's own experience, the Valis Trilogy are his most explicitly religious books and the last ones he published before he died. We'll continue with parts...