Mystery Review: Dark Passage takes the statement "nobody ever said life was fair" to the breaking point. If it wasn't for bad luck, the wrongly convicted Vincent Parry wouldn't have any luck at all. When he somehow escapes prison he finds almost the whole world is against him. David Goodis is one of those "best writer you've never heard of" discoveries. While to my mind not in a league with Hammett, Chandler, Mosley, or Ross MacDonald as far as enduring works, you won't miss reading them while reading Goodis. Dark Passage features a dark, pessimistic view of the world, lonely and isolated, that makes the reader hope even when there's no chance of hope because that's all there is left. "I tell you it ain't bearable when a person has nothing to look forward to." When the novel hits various emotional peaks, the panicked, stream-of-consciousness, hearing-voices style of writing is overwhelming. In a world of paranoia, Parry doesn't want much, maybe the love a good woman, doesn't matter much about her looks. No hard-boiled, leering descriptions of pulchritudinous dames here. He's a man on the outside looking in, envying those who have what he doesn't: "He liked to see them coming in wearing their expensive clothes, smoking their expensive cigars, talking with their expensive voices." Goodis mixes plot with characterization with the best of them and sucks the reader into his world, which is all we can ask of a writer. Dark Passage is also a film noir with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall (1947). [4★]
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