Classic Noir Novels: Hoodlums - George Benet

One of the latest books from the always impressive Black Gat Books line is HOODLUMS, a crime novel by George Benet. Originally published by Avon in 1953 under the title THE HOODLUMS, as by John Eagle, it was very successful, selling more than half a million copies, but that wasn’t enough to keep Benet from walking away from the writing business and working as a longshoreman for many years before finally turning out two more books decades later.

HOODLUMS isn’t your average crime novel, though. There are plenty of criminals in it, including protagonist Kirk Wagner, an ex-con who falls in with his former partner, even though the guy double-crossed him and left him to take the rap for a previous job. Now they’re involved in a scheme where they pass counterfeit bills, which is a step up from what Kirk was doing before, which is beating and robbing homosexuals who approach him in a park near the Chicago neighborhood where Kirk lives. The money Kirk makes from this counterfeit racket allows him to pursue the girl of his dreams, a stripper/nude model/stag film starlet named Jeannie. Jeannie has a problem, a stalker who writes her long, obscene letters . . . but maybe Jeannie likes those letters a little too much.

Art by Kirk Wilson

As you can probably tell from that description, HOODLUMS is a pretty sordid, squalid book with a real sense of impending doom about it. Kirk Wagner is one of the most unlikable protagonists you’re likely to encounter, which makes it all the more impressive that Benet makes you root for the guy. Late in the book, when Kirk has a chance to escape from the darkness closing in all around him, the reader really wants him to make it. Whether he will or not . . . you have to read the book to find that out.

And I recommend that you do read HOODLUMS. There’s not much plot, and what there is just sort of ambles along, and Benet’s prose runs the gamut from clunky to self-consciously literary. But there are also a lot of highly effective passages, and he does a fantastic job of making Chicago come alive and serve as another character in the book. The places he describes aren’t ones that I’d like to visit, except in the pages of a book like this. Mostly, though, Benet has that unteachable storytelling knack that really kept me flipping the pages. HOODLUMS is a powerful novel, and if you enjoy noir fiction, it’s definitely worth reading.