‘The Lowdown,’ Jim Thompson and the Ghosts of Noir

Over on his most recent newsletter, critic and “punk whisperer” Jim Ruland makes an interesting assertion about crime fiction:

“One my gripes against contemporary crime fiction is how conservative it is. All genre fiction is conservative in that it adheres to the conventions of the genre that set it apart from other forms of writing. Many contemporary writers take this as a cue to write conservatively, in other words to conform, reinforcing the tropes of crime, mystery, and suspense. This bores me.”

I thought about Jim’s comments during the finale of “The Lowdown,” Sterlin Harjo’s newish series starring Ethan Hawke as a journalist/bookstore owner named Lee Raybon, who spends the bulk of his time cruising the mean streets of Tulsa in his battered white van, digging into the crimes of the local elite. Like Harjo’s other series, “Reservation Dogs,” a significant amount of screentime is devoted to Oklahoma’s local color, including various weirdos and miscreants—to the point where the central mystery, involving murder and land deals, threatens to end up on the proverbial back burner.

If any noir aficionados who haven’t seen the series read that description and think it sounds like something Jim Thompson might have written on his shaggiest of days, well, you’re not wrong—Thompson is an overt influence here. A set of his paperbacks becomes a major plot point, and characters quote the author fairly frequently. Thompson was born in Oklahoma Territory in 1906, making him the patron saint of Midwest crime authors.

As “The Lowdown” ticks toward its final episodes, though, the Thompson influence falls away, replaced by narrative elements out of an airport-bookstore thriller. The body count rises, a dark conspiracy is revealed, and Lee, who’s seemed largely content to badger people in the name of his alt-weekly, suddenly shifts from citizen journalist to detective—pointing guns at people, chasing murderers, making backroom deals with powerful crooks.

I wasn’t disappointed by the emergence of those old tropes. It was like one of your favorite songs popping onto the jukebox in a dim tavern: Yeah, I love this one! That almost-Pavlovian reaction is why agents and editors get a terrified look in their eyes whenever an author says their latest mystery manuscript “subverts the cliches”: they know most of the audience wants their familiar hits.

I don’t always feel that way, I hasten to add. It’s difficult to excited about some of the review copies that pop in the ol’ mailbox, because I can predict the ‘twists’ before I turn the page. But if you’re good, you can get away with quite a bit, and the writers and directors of “The Lowdown” are very good.

Just to riff on Jim Ruland’s assertion a little more: most of crime fiction is also politically conservative, and always has been. Your cop or detective protagonist is often a vehicle for society (or at least the stodgiest version of it) reasserting itself; criminals and heisters pay with their lives; the system remains untouched. A few writers, like Thompson, have tried to subvert this urge toward law and order—you’ll never look at cops the same way again after reading “The Killer Inside Me”—and it’s astounding how much visceral hatred they’ve attracted from many in publishing as a result. I still remember attending a panel at Bouchercon (perhaps the largest crime-fiction conference in America) and hearing one of Canada’s leading crime-fiction reviewers blithely dismiss Thompson as “trash” while a ballroom of geriatrics nodded in agreement; I walked out, tempted to throw a middle finger as I went.

At least “The Lowdown,” despite that reliance on tropes in its climactic stretch, doesn’t dip a toe into those culturally conservative currents; the authorities stay scary. More broadly, I feel like the indie crime-fiction scene has done some good work in subverting tropes and pushing back against the copaganda that dominates the bestseller lists; it’s just too bad those books reach a relatively limited audience. Thompson would’ve been pleased with some of this output, although irony of ironies, those indie writers who bray the loudest about writing like Thompson are often the ones who understand him the least.

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Nick Kolakowski is the author of several crime novels, including “Where the Bones Lie”, “Payback is Forever”, „Maxine Unleashes Doomsday“ and „Boise Longpig Hunting Club“ as well as the Love & Bullets trilogy of novellas. His work has been nominated for the Anthony and Derringer awards, and his short story “Scorpions” appeared in The Best Mystery and Suspense 2024. His short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines, including Mystery Weekly, Shotgun Honey, Rock and a Hard Place Press, and more.

Just out: RIGHTEOUS TRASH, the third book in what is called the Boise Noir Trilogy. Rock and a Hard Place Press did a masterful job on the cover (as they did with the reissued editions of the first two books in the trilogy, BOISE LONGPIG HUNTING CLUB and RATTLESNAKE RODEO).

RIGHTEOUS TRASH follows Jake, an Iraq War veteran and former bounty hunter, and his gun-running sister Frankie as they try to dig themselves out of a big financial hole the only way they know how—by doing something incredibly insane and possibly deadly. »This time around, the action isn’t restricted to Idaho; there’s also a sequence set in New Orleans that’s a.) based on a real-life incident, if you can believe it, and b.) one of the funnier things I’ve written. The book’s centerpiece is also the craziest robbery I could think of—I had a lot of fun orchestrating that bit of chaos.«

His „Payback is Forever“ (Shotgun Honey 2022) is inspired clearly by the novels of Richard Stark. Our review here (in German). – See also his Hell of a Mess. A Love & Bullets Hookup.

Nick Kolakowski, geboren 1980, aufgewachsen in Washington. D.C., hat Geschichte in Chicago studiert. Er schreibt Romane, Kurzgeschichten, Lyrik und Essays, viele davon über Crime Fiction und verwandte Themen. Seine Texte erscheinen u. a. in der Washington Post, in Shotgun Honey, North American Review, The Evergreen Review, Rust & Months. Kolakowski lebt in New York City. Eine Besprechung des von Parker inspirierten „Payback is Forever“ in unseren Bloody Chops.

Bei Suhrkamp auf Deutsch: Love & Bullets.
His essays with us. 

His website nickkolakowski.com

His column „Smoking Gun“ with us: 
‘Salem’s Lot’ and the Horror of a Stephen King Adaptation
(27) „Rebel Ridge“: Calmly Burn the Whole Thing Down
‘Monsieur Spade’ and the Faustian Bargain
John Woo is Remaking ‘The Killer.’ But Why?
The Newest ‘Ripley’ Series is Stunning and Flawed
‘Sugar’: Not the Neo-Noir Revival We Need
(3) Moral Redemption in Noir: Is It Possible?
(4) What Makes Jack Reacher Tick?
(5) ‘True Detective: Night Country’ Tries to Make the Familiar into Something New
(6) Is David Fincher’s ‘The Killer’ a Comedy? 
(7) Rewatching ‘Drive’: Gosling as Noir’s Apex Predator
(8) Elmore Leonard  – City Primeval
(9) Cormac McCarthy Used Crime Fiction’s Tropes to Make Masterpieces
(10) Parker: Donald Westlake’s One Amazing Trick
(11) Cosby, Winslow, Pruitt: Three Heavy-Hitting Thillers for Summer
(12) Weed-Based Crime Thrillers are Going Up in Smoke
(13) ‘The Last of Us’: Crime in the Post-Apocalypse 
(14) What Made “Glass Onion” and “Knives Out” So Popular?
(15) Jordan Harper’s One-Two Punch of Crime Fiction Deserves a Wide Audience
(16) ‘True Detective’ Season 2: Was It Better Than We All Thought?
(17) From ‘Touch of Evil’ to ‘True Detective,’ Long Shots are Crime Films’ Secret Weapon
(18) Michael Mann, again: What Michael Mann Teaches Us About Enduring Crime Fiction
(19) „Heat 2“ – How Do You Craft a Sequel to a Masterpiece?
(20) 4 Ways Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” Novel Stands Out From the Film.
(21) On „Heat“: Manhunter Takes Down Thief: How Michael Mann’s Early Career Led to ‘Heat’
(22) The Most Honest Nihilism – on „The Way of the Gun“
(23) No, Time to Die – The latest James Bond movie digs into the fatalism at the iconic spy’s core.
(24) Cormac McCarthy’s Overlooked Masterpiece? – „The Councelor“
(25) „Nightmare Alley“ – How Guillermo del Toro’s Film Alters a Masterpiece Noir Novel
(26) David Cronenberg – The Carnal Crime of “A History of Violence” and “Eastern Promises”
(27) With Parker, Donald E. Westlake Pulled Off Crime Fiction’s Most Spectacular Magic Trick
(28) Guy Ritchie’s Return to Crime Films is Worth Watching
(29) Alex Garland’s ‘Civil War’: Hint of Things to Come?
(30) David Lynch and the Beautiful Weirdness
(31) ‘Where the Bones Lie’ and the Engine of California Noir
(32) “Den of Thieves 2”: Stealing from the Best
(33) White Lotus and the Gentle Art of Hating Your Protagonists
(34) Neal Stephenson
(35) Where is Storytelling Going?
(36) ‚She Rides Shotgun‘ and the Making of Legends
(37) Jack Bauer, ‘24’ and the Great Memory-Hole
(38) How “Play Dirty” Did Richard Stark’s Parker Dirty