Death Comes Too Late

There is an art to the short story. They should not try to emulate their longer cousins, or even the novelette format. A short story should pop up, throws a few punches then head off again without a backwards glance, but the best of them with leave an impression, a lingering sense of something in a reader’s mind. Charles Ardai knows something about pulp fiction being the founder of Hard Case Crime. Death Comes Too Late is a collection of twenty of the author’s stories to celebrate twenty years of imprint. 

For many death comes too soon, but in the case of pulp fiction it often comes too late, not for the poor victims, but the perpetrators of the crime. Pulp often follows a case from the perspective of the worst type of people who live in the shadows. People who are not dealt the justice that they deserve, instead walking the streets to commit more crimes. Death has plenty of stories about morally ambiguous characters but is also a great example how the idea of noir can cross over to many time periods and situations. 

For many the noir is a mid-20th century concept of PIs in fedoras tackling criminals in the bar, the alleyway, and the rooftop. Death does not really have any of these tales, as noir fits into far more places than just this. Nobody Wins is a PI case, but other noir areas are covered that also feel like a good fit. Have you ever thought how dark and messed up the world of Hollywood is? Goin’ West is both a classic feeling noir piece, but also tackles modern issues in the papers of today when an actress is passed into the hands of a less than reliable movie agent. 

The stories cover a wide range of characters, but they are often hard hitting. The outcome for even the nicer people is not guaranteed. Game Over, Masks and Sleep! Sleep! Beauty Bright have characters you would like to see win for once, but that may not to be their fate. 

Some of the characters get what they deserve; Home Front and The Case. What Ardai shows is that no matter whether a character is morally ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ they are human. The author does not bring morals into the story, instead writing the narrative in a natural way. Success and failure do not result from your ability to say please and thank you, or how quick you can draw a gun (although in some cases all these things can help). 

This collection is rare for short stories in that there are so many great tales. Of the twenty on offer, I can still recall eighteen of them vividly just by reading the titles again. In the introduction of the book Ardai speaks about the art of writing a short story and this is what the author brings to the format – artistry. The books are all noir, but they range in time from historic China to the present day. There are classic crime stories, but also a superhero investigation. 

Ardai proves that in the hands of a talented writer noir can be written into many unusual places. Death is one of the finest collections of stories I have read. The stories are not all shock endings you expect from the format, but you do get some of those. You also get intelligent and well-paced short stories that belie the idea that you cannot have a strong structure in only a few pages. With Ardai’s eye for a fantastic crime story, here is hoping for at least another twenty years of the author’s writing and the Hard Case Crime books.