Mystery Review: Build My Gallows High is classic pulp fiction with hard-boiled detectives, femme fatales, gangsters, betrayals, murders, and everything else requisite in noir fiction. A short novel, a quick read, and right in the Hammett, Cain, Chandler tradition. The plot gets confusing in places, but doesn't detract from the story because it's really about existential despair: doomed love, doomed life, and nobody gets out of this life alive. All sins must be paid. This was the last published novel by Daniel Mainwaring (1902-77) who went on to be a full time screenwriter. One can't talk about Build My Gallows High without mentioning the movie made from it, the quintessential film noir Out of the Past (1947) with Jane Greer, Robert Mitchum, and Kirk Douglas (remade as Against All Odds in 1984). It's sufficiently different to make reading the book still suspenseful. Although the film's screenplay is credited to "Geoffrey Homes" (aka Mainwaring), I don't believe he wrote it. None of the movie's best lines are found in the book, and, sadly, Build My Gallows High isn't as good as the film it inspired. [4★]
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