STEEL GUITAR NEO-NOIR: Jesse Hilson's The Tattletales
Review by Adam Van Winkle
Darryl Winter is in a pickle. Darryl means “beloved,” and Winter is the dying time. And it certainly looks at times like Darryl is barreling toward the sweet release of the end.
The Tattletales by Jesse Hilson is a detective thriller, only instead of Chandler’s oldschool Los Angeles it’s 1951 Montana-noir built around pool halls, pickups, cathouses and cigar smoke. Madam Missouri Irene hires private dick Winters to spy on rival madam Sunshine Maddy.
But Winters is no Philip Marlowe. Where Marlowe is restrained and always on top of the finances, Winters drinks away seventy bucks of the first hundred advanced by Irene and doesn’t remember it. He can’t even recollect if he’s begun the investigation or not. Fortunately he hasn’t, and he soon gets to it.
I’m not going to continue the blow by blow. Read it for yourself—you’ll dig it. Throw in some steel guitar, and this one’s a fantastic merger of the neowestern and seedy detective story. Hilson deftly handles his complicated story and, more impressively, draws sympathetic pulp characters you’ll fall for. There’s nothing rote about the writing in this paperback, a worthy descendant of the best of the dimestore novel racks.
The Tattletales was released in June 2023 from Prism Thread Books and is available here.
Review by Adam Van Winkle
Darryl Winter is in a pickle. Darryl means “beloved,” and Winter is the dying time. And it certainly looks at times like Darryl is barreling toward the sweet release of the end.
The Tattletales by Jesse Hilson is a detective thriller, only instead of Chandler’s oldschool Los Angeles it’s 1951 Montana-noir built around pool halls, pickups, cathouses and cigar smoke. Madam Missouri Irene hires private dick Winters to spy on rival madam Sunshine Maddy.
But Winters is no Philip Marlowe. Where Marlowe is restrained and always on top of the finances, Winters drinks away seventy bucks of the first hundred advanced by Irene and doesn’t remember it. He can’t even recollect if he’s begun the investigation or not. Fortunately he hasn’t, and he soon gets to it.
I’m not going to continue the blow by blow. Read it for yourself—you’ll dig it. Throw in some steel guitar, and this one’s a fantastic merger of the neowestern and seedy detective story. Hilson deftly handles his complicated story and, more impressively, draws sympathetic pulp characters you’ll fall for. There’s nothing rote about the writing in this paperback, a worthy descendant of the best of the dimestore novel racks.
The Tattletales was released in June 2023 from Prism Thread Books and is available here.