Manifesto for the Dead

By Domenic Stansberry

Book Overview

The publication of The Last Days of II Duce brought new fans to Stansberry and his mastery of classic noir. Now Stansberry turns to the seamy streets of Los Angeles in 1971.Aging pulp novelist Jim Thompson is drinking away the end of his days in Hollywood bars. Then, hired to write a script about a low-life hired to kill a film exec's girlfriend, Thompson finds that his life begins to imitate his art as the producer plans to live the plot and leave Jim to take the fall.This is top-notch noir blended with biography, fiction, suspense, and satire.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312267614
• ISBN13: 9780312267612
• Release Date: March 2001
• Publisher: Minotaur Books
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 0.5" x 7.5"

Customer Reviews

Stansberry Takes You Inside the Glitter ...

... and shows that all isn't golden. I don't know if Jim Thompson would have appreciated the story, but Stansberry captures his voice and puts us in the booth next to the creaters of the noir classics for a ride that captures both the voice and atmosphere of classic noir. While some may complain that noir is too dark, the problem may lie in the fact that it's too real for fiction. Stansberry captures that in the work and does an excellent job creating a story within the story which reflects the voice of Jim Thompson while remaining true to his own voice within his own narration. Not a great book, but a good addition to the canon.

Off-beat Classic

This book did not get as much attention as Last Days of Il Duce, but it is in many ways a more interesting novel--with its novel-within-a-novel structure and its dynamic portrait of crime novelist Jim Thompson. A short, punchy book that defies easy categorization. Stansberry defintely twists the genre to his own purposes here. I liked Il Duce a lot, but this is more gold from a very good writer working on the fringes of the convenentional crime genre.