Fade to Blonde

by Max Phillips

Book Overview

HE AGREED TO PROTECT HER FROM A VENGEFUL MOBSTER. HE JUST DIDN'T REALIZE HE'D HAVE TO JOIN THE MOB TO DO IT. Ray Corson came to Hollywood to be a screenwriter, not hired muscle. But when money's tight... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0857683136
• ISBN13: 9780857683137
• Release Date: April 2011
• Publisher: Hard Case Crime
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 4.2" x 6.7"

Customer Reviews

All Hail! The Glory Days Have Returned!

If the names John D. MacDonald, Cornell Woolrich, Mickey Spillane, Jim Thompson, James M. Cain, Fredric Brown, David Goodis, and Dan J. Marlowe mean nothing to you, then Fade To Blonde is not your cup of tea. BUT if hearing these names make your fingers twitch to clutch a slim, dog-eared, brittle paperback with a colorful, lurid cover, then Hard Case Crime publishers has your poison and Fade To Blonde is a healthy dose. Hard Case Crime burst on the scene in September 2004 with the goal of bringing back the classic days of pulp, paperback originals. Every month there are 2 offerings: A classic (and I do mean classic) novel from the past and a new book from the current torch bearers. Fade To Blonde is the brightest star so far in this excellent line. The action is tough, gritty. The plotting tight and sharp enough to shave with. And Mr. Philips captures the tone and feel of those classics of yesteryear absolutely flawlessly. The book could well have been written 50 years ago. If you didn't look at the copywrite page, you'd think it had been. The book moves like a rocket. The characters stay with you long after the last line has seared your retinas. It is one of the best crime novels I have ever read. I give it my highest recommendation. All hail Hard Case Crime! And Fade To Blonde. An instant classic.

hard boiled neo classic

When I was a child I used to sneak and read my father's pulp novels. Max Phillips has written a book that can stand in with the best of them. The hero, Ray a would be writer, has had a knock around life. He's a tough guy who doesn't mind doing what needs to be done but only if it squares with his personal code of honor. Rebecca LaFontaine is one of the most interesting heroines I've read about in a very long time. She's got so many sides to her character and all are complicated. The more Ray learns about her, the more he wants to know. The side characters are all what you'd expect from a 1950s crime novel. There are gangsters, small time hoods, wise cracking girl Fridays, world weary loyal friends and of course, stooges. All of these characters are written beautifully. None of this is cliched or fake. I kept looking at the copyright page to find the orignial publication date and was amazed to find that this is a newly published original novel. THis is an exciting book that never lets up the suspense. You will be shocked by the ending. It's the last think you'd suspect. I had a lot of fun reading Fade to Blonde and I'm going to look for more in this series.

Another excellent Hard Case offering

Ray Corson is a wannabe-screenwriter, ex-boxer, and odd job man. Now he's about to get involved in his oddest job yet: protecting ex-porn actress Rebecca LaFontaine from Lance Halliday, pretty-boy mobster, stag film producer, and lye enthusiast. Max Phillips is the co-founder of the Hard Case Crime imprint, but any publishing house with an eye for the future would have taken on Fade to Blonde. When an author like Phillips -- who usually writes meaningful mainstream fiction like The Artist's Wife and Snakebite Sonnet -- tries his hand at hard-boiled genre fiction, the end result is either going to be a joke or a classic. My wager is on the latter. Rebecca LaFontaine turns out to be one of the more interesting femmes fatales I've met lately, if only because she's so full of surprises. Just when you think you've got a bead on her, Corson discovers something else about her -- or she confesses it, and this girl just aches to confess things, especially if they're only tangentially related to the truth and will assist in her use of her physical attributes to get her way -- that changes key perceptions about her character. (For another take on this type of sexually manipulative woman in a different setting, and from her own viewpoint, see the abovementioned The Artist's Wife.) You can tell Phillips is a literary novelist because that little piece of story I described at the beginning is just that: the beginning. In the course of Corson's travels, he comes across more people and gets himself involved in more difficult situations than should be able to fit in these 220-odd pages. What keeps Fade to Blonde from being 500 pages is Phillips' economy with words (I'll skip the Hemingway reference, though, if you don't mind). This keeps the story moving because there are often two or more things going on at once; even when Ray is just sitting on a stool in a restaurant -- or holding one of Rebecca's marketable breasts in his hand -- dialogue (and often money) is being exchanged that moves the plot forward. Everything eventually comes together, though in a typical "mystery" ending, where Corson discovers the mysterious thread that ties all the information together. In the end, when he goes back to his previous way of life, it's a little disappointing, but you know that he isn't likely to keep minding his own business for long. Fade to Blonde may be a little high-toned for the average pulp aficionado, but those who appreciate it will enjoy Phillips' depth of characterization and especially his ability to stick to the rules of the genre while giving it his own stamp of intellect.

Hard Case Crime's First Original

So, I picked up the first pair of Hard Case Crime novels (this and Block's Grifter's Game), expecting a good read. Let me tell you, brothers and sisters, I more than got it. This is a fast read, a white knuckle story of gangsters, hoods and a femme fatale who all suck the loner/outsider protagonist into a tough underworld. It is a trip to hell. One of the main strengths of the novel is its author's voice, who brings something of a modern sensibility to material that could otherwise be dated. Still, the book has a vintage feel to it. The piece works and works well. If you like James Ellroy's Bop Quartet, you'll probably dig this.

1st Original for Hard Case Crime is a gem

Set in a Hollywood of second-raters and also-rans (think Horace McCoy)and narrated by a sensitive tough guy not adverse to horrific violence (think Dashiell Hammett), Fade To Blonde moves like lightning yet never stinges on character or place, and the plotting is a marvel of clarity. It's impossible to finish this book and not want to stock up on Max Phillips and Hard Case Crime.