Point Blank with Crime Novelist
Ed Gorman
Interview
by Dean Brierly
Ed
Gorman is a writer of tough crime fiction that evokes in its relentless
narrative drive and brooding atmospherics the classic crime and noir films of Hollywood’s golden era.
Gorman’s outsider characters bear numerous affinities with the doomed
protagonists of noir, and he frequently leads them on nerve-shredding journeys
to the end of the savage night. Since the publication of his first novel in 1985, Gorman has written dozens of compulsively readable suspense, horror
and science fiction books characterized by fascination (and empathy) with the
dark side of human nature, with fear and loneliness, with transgression and
redemption.
No
surprise then that the man described as “the poet of dark suspense†turns out
to be a lifelong devotee of dark cinema. What is surprising is that it took Hollywood
so long to recognize this literary heavyweight’s knockout appeal. The Poker Club, the first Gorman book to
be adapted for the screen, is currently in post-production. His latest novel,
Fools Rush In (Pegasus Publishing),
continues his obsession with characters who live and die on the wrong side of
the tracks. In this exclusive Cinema Retro interview, Gorman talks about the
seminal crime films that have long fascinated and inspired him.