Nightfall

“An almost perfect book, spare, balanced, and inexplicably moving.”—Geoffrey O’Brien

Jim Vanning has an identity crisis. Is he an innocent artist who just happens to have some very dangerous people interested in him? Or is he a killer on the lam from his last murder—with a satchel worth over $300,000 in tow?

Relentlessly focused, Nightfall may be David Goodis’ most accomplished novel. It is a fiendishly constructed maze, filled with unpredictable pitfalls and human predators whose authenticity only makes them more terrifying.

David Goodis (1917–1967), a former pulp, radio, and Hollywood script writer, is now recognized as a leading author of crime fiction. Besides sojourns in New York City and Hollywood, he lived primarily in Philadelphia.

Known as the poet of the losers, David Goodis (1917-1967) was an elusive, reclusive man. At his death he was living in obscurity with no living family. Few photographs of him exist. Dark Passage was his first major work, published in 1946, and opted for a Hollywood film with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.