High Fliers, Middleweights, and Lowlifes

Legendary noir author David Goodis is as haunting and mysterious a figure as any of the protagonists in his novels. Among the most alluring of the mysteries surrounding him is how did he go from Retreat from Oblivion in 1939, his first novel, a melodrama about several inter-connected couples, to Dark Passage, his second novel and first noir masterpiece, in 1946? The answer is in the pulp fiction stories he wrote between those two tales of daring aviators, dashing athletes, and ruthless gangsters. In these short stories, Goodis evolved into the master of noir that he is known today.

High Fliers, Middleweights, and David Goodis in the Pulps is a companion volume to Looking for Lost A Bibliographic Investigation of David Goodis’s Pulp Fiction. This critical-reference volume includes summaries and commentary on nearly all of Goodis’s identified magazine work published under his own name or under pseudonyms.