Yes, I read a lot. Quite voraciously, in fact. I often can’t wait to finish a book so I can start on another. This is the fourth or fifth book I have read this week. I read a few series so I haven’t composed any entries for those, as I will probably wait until I finish all the books that have been published in them so far.

Dashiell Hammett is one the prime writers of noir pulp fiction. Slightly minimalist but with a remarkable sight for detail, he crafts dark tales about shadowy characters and undesirable circumstances. He has such a natural hand for creating these dark stories and that is no doubt thanks to his former professions as a sergeant in the military and his work for a private detective agency.

Woman in the Dark is undeniably one of his lesser works. It feels somewhat rushed and unfinished. I never got a true sense of the characters and their motivations. I felt as if I were missing something. But it is a quick read, taking little less than an hour to complete it. Why it is billed as a novel I don’t quite understand, since it hardly can be classified as even a novella at only 75 pages. I picked this up at my local library since it is something I hadn’t even heard of before. Apparently it was originally published in a magazine called Liberty in 1933 and in three installments. And the book itself it is three parts, each one a separate journey. There’s a better story in here somewhere. It has all the classic makings of one of those classic noir novels. The damsel in distress, the misunderstood, sensitive and dangerous ex-con, the slimy cohorts and acquaintances, etc.

Nighttime. A young woman appears at the door of an isolated house. She is frightened and hurt. She speaks with a foreign accent. The man and the woman inside take her in. Other strangers appear, in obvious pursuit of the girl. There is menace in the air–some unspoken, unexplained aura of violence and misdeed…

There is an uncharacteristic sentimentalism to Woman in the Dark. After all, its extended title contains the words A Novel of Dangerous Romance. The ending is an optimistic one, rushed and forced as it may be. Seldom do these types of stories end with such hope. Perhaps that hope would hold more resonance if the characters were fuller, if I could understand how these two souls–the damsel in distress and the ex-con–ended up falling in love in such a short span of time (hardly more than a day!) and under the bleakest of circumstances.

I can recommend this book for those who enjoy Hammett’s other works but I don’t know that it would appeal to others. But again, it is such a brisk read, you’d hardly feel as if your time was wasted.