Before he became known to the literary world for the brilliant Wittgenstein's Mistress, Markson made a living by writing pulps. But these were no ordinary pulps. Markson had great fun playing with the conventions of the genre, and they are just as fun to read. These two put his Marlowesque PI into Greenwich Village, circa 1960, amongst the bohemians and beatniks. (And yes, he mercilessly rips into them to expose them as the poseurs they obviously were.)
—Recommended by Jeff, City Lights Books
Before achieving critical acclaim as a novelist, David Markson paid the rent by writing several crime novels, including two featuring the private detective Harry Fannin. Together here in one volume, these works are now available to a new generation of readers.
In Epitaph for a Tramp, Fannin isn't called out to investigate a murder — it happens on his doorstop. In the sweltering heat of a New York August night, he answers the buzzer at his door to find his promiscuous ex-wife dying from a knife wound. To find her killer, Fannin plies his trade with classic hard-boiled aplomb. In the second novel, Epitaph for a Dead Beat, Fannin finds himself knee-deep in murder among the beatniks and bohemians of the early 1960s, where blood seems to flow as readily as cheap Chianti.
Intricately plotted and rife with wisecracks, David Markson offers suspenseful and literary crime novels.
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