So Many Doors (Hard Case Crime) Kindle Edition

This is black hole-level noir, a sojourn in a hollow universe that makes Gloucester's wanton boys killing flies look like well-behaved visitors to Main Street in Disneyland.The story proper begins in the central valley in the Depression. A young, poor farmer's daughter named Vassilia Baird ("V") falls for a heavy equipment operator and is thrown out of the house by her widower father. The cat skinner is named Jack Ward and the story's prologue introduces him to us in his cell on death row.Actually, we begin with an epigraph from the titanically lonely and never cheerful Edward Arlington Robinson, writing of the "weaklings' vain distress/To suffer dungeons where so many doors/Will open on the cold eternal shores/That look sheer down/To the dark tideless floods of Nothingness/Where all who know may drown."For those who wish to take a dip in the dark tideless floods of Nothingness, have at it. This will become your signature novel. I read a great deal of noir and this is far too extreme for me.The author directed the UC-Irvine creative writing program and came in contact with many distinguished writers; hence the jacket blurb from Michael Chabon. He wrote both pulp fiction and mainstream fiction. SO MANY DOORS is a blend of the two. The plot, at its core, concerns a crime but the story is completely character-driven and we know, from the first word, that this is going nowhere good. It is a tale of fatal love, lust and endless emotional torment that carries the impact of classical tragedy but is perhaps better described as Ellroy's "tragic realism." The difference from Ellroy is that there is humor in his universe and virtue and, ultimately, some degree of faith. SO MANY DOORS is dark to the core. There is some sex and violence but nothing compared with that routinely seen today. What there is is a plethora of emotional torment that is exacerbated by the intensity of the central characters' self-destruction and our immediate recognition of its complete inevitability.The writing is very impressive for its pacing and urgency; there are few really lyric moments (until the concluding paragraphs). The author seldom follows Elmore Leonard's injunction concerning the avoidance of adverbs. Still, the book is a cruel masterpiece.Bottom line: think hard about reading this book. You will not be able to put it down and it will take you to a very dark place.

I agree with the excellent reviews above that this is a great book. Kudos to Hard Case Crime for once again proving how well they cover the diverse kinds of writing in the noir crime genre.I don’t think this is pulp, either in style, plot elements, or packaging (under pseudonyms, Hall was publishing pulp thrillers at the time, but he was also a very well-reviewed mainstream novelist). _Doors_was first published by Random House in 1950, and the next year it was in a Bantam paperback. It does feature a dramatic, punch-by-punch account of a fistfight that would match anything in Spillane or Goodis. The setting is rural California where “cat skinners” use muscle, stamina, and heavy equipment to clear farmland. They are randy, hard drinking, and seek out entertainments that test their nerve. Both the shocking denouement and the final paragraphs set in a death row cell are typical pulp situations. James M Cain comes to mind, and also Thompson, Hammett, Goodis, and Horace McCoy.The differences begin with the length. Paperback originals had limitations, due to publishers’ short profit margins. Suspense is secondary to the unstoppable advance of fatal entrapment. The violence and sexual explicitness are more restrained; magazine reviewers would disdain a prurient focus as a insult to “taste.” The Bantam cover shows a slim blonde V looking uneasily at the viewer while muscular Jack unbuttons his shirt while staring fixedly at her. The couple are in a shabby room with peeling wallpaper (no sultry blonde nude allowed back then).V is not a femme fatale. She and Jack have a powerful attraction to each other, but their mysterious loneliness—shared in diverse ways by the other characters despite age, wealth, or class—drives them all to open doors which lead to drown in “floods of nothingness.” Writers like Hall have no obligation to let readers emerge with a faith in help from unexpected places or a possible better American future. Nor has he any intention of creating an ambiguity that makes readers both glad they are not in the protagonist’s’ shoes, and yet envious of them. Paperback crime stirs its readers in various ways, and one is the fun of vicarious participation. Hall writes stark tragedy.

Ten years after the author’s death, Hard Case Crime has repackaged and republished a sixty year old pulp classic. So Many Doors is an amazing work, capturing a depression-era world of Bakersfield and a desolate sadness that overlays everything. There’s a murder case at the nub of it all. After all, the book begins with a lawyer visiting his reluctant client on death row.But, the murder isn’t the story so much as how did Jack and V. Travel down the round that led them here to this fateful place. Think of it more as a tale of dreams and youthful innocence being crushed. Think of it as a tale about boundless love being turned into hate and jealousy so much so that everything good and decent in a person dies. Maybe the book doesn’t promise a rose garden, but it’s actually a bed of thorns.V. Is the femme fatale of the story, the temptress who drives every man mad, most of all Jack. And, in her wake is a crimson tide of pain, death, ruin. But V. Is also the innocent schoolgirl who her father tried to protect and who falls hook line and sinker for the first guy she meets.The story is about the intricate dance between Jack and V. Is she the innocent virgin who he takes advantage of or the vicious femme fatale who breaks his manhood in two? Can she make him jealous enough to win him back or by doing so will she sow so much distrust that whatever was between them will always be impure and twisted ? Can he stay free or feel trapped? Can he run away and start over? Or are they doomed to repeat their steps over and over again?This brilliant work captures the sadness and disillusionment of the characters and their eternal despair.

"So Many Doors" - could be shortened by Two Hundred pages and the story would still be intact. It begins well and then falls into a writing exercise of various characters and all but one is important to the Story. V the main character is the most sympathetic of all the characters. As a seventeen year old, she falls in love with a self centered serving misogynist who destroys everything in his path. Whoever wrote the tease on the Jacket should at least read the book.NO ! NO ! NO !