Heartbreak and vine - Woody Haut

A companion piece to Woody Haut's two acclaimed histories of post-war American crime fiction, Pulp Culture and Neon Noir, Heartbreak and Vine tells the story of the intimate links between crime fiction and films. Almost all the great names of crime fiction, from Hammett to Chandler, Leonard to Ellroy, have spent time in Hollywood and Haut recounts their experiences and provides an acute commentary on the development of the crime movie from Little Caesar to The Big Sleep, Kiss Me Deadly to LA Confidential.
Haut illuminates the movieland careers of early greats like W.R. Burnett and James M. Cain, and then brings the story right up to date with original interviews with contemporary crime novelists like Eddie Bunker, George P. Pelecanos and James Lee Burke talking about their Hollywood experiences. A must read for anyone seriously interested in either American crime fiction or film noir.

Born in Detroit in 1945, Woody Haut grew up in Pasadena, California, attended San Francisco State University, and has lived in Britain since the early 1970s. Presently a London-based journalist, he has worked as a college lecturer, taxi-cab driver, record shop assistant, cinema programmer and Labour Editor for Rolling Stock magazine (US).

?The tendency now known as "film noir" was created by writers as well as directors and Woody Haut

s elegant account of those tough-guy novelists and their Hollywood misadventures is fascinating, thorough, and, in some cases, positively noirish? J. Hoberman, film critic, The Village Voice.
'Both the crime novel and the Hollywood film are popular, commercial forms that upon occasion aspire to art ? or achieve it by chance. Woody Haut's new book makes much of that contradiction, and gives us an immensely readable survey of hardboiled writers in Hollywood, from Hammett and Goodis to Eddie Bunker and Dennis Lehane. One turns the final page wanting more
James Sallis