Memories flood back. The joy of holding this supple volume with its black dust jacket in your hands. Joy at seeing the name Horace McCoy on the cover. A pleasure to dive back into these good old stories of violence and corruption. Gallimard has had the good idea of reissuing A shroud has no pocketswhich dates from 1937. This is the author’s second novel (he also wrote the terrible and desperate On achève bien les chevaux and I should have stayed home). The whole package is here.

There’s the upright journalist who slams the door because he’s refused an article on baseball shenanigans. There’s the the femmes fatalesall more or less in love with him (“He said to himself that she had extraordinarily red lips, that he had never seen lips so red.”). Gangsters are on the prowl. The threat lurks. Mike Dolan is the brave little soldier who stands up to the bad guys, working his ass off to expose the scandals that plague the town of Colton. What better…