Written by David Goodis

And he wouldn’t let go of the gun as the pain went driving into him and going up and down the tube and in his stomach the tube was glossy and purple and in his brain the tube was black and burning and somewhere in the middle the tube was clear and it was a glass tube and he could see into it and know that Arbogast was no longer trying hard for the gun but trying hard to kill him with the knee in the throat. He could see it in the glassy clear middle of the tube, Arbogast burying him here and then going back to her and getting sixty thousand from her and going away and getting twenty more thousand from her and going away and coming back and getting thirty more thousand, forty more thousand, going away, coming back, going away and coming back and he could see her giving the money to Argogast and he could get the sound of her asking Arbogast where he was and what had happened to him and Arbogast telling her he was somewhere around and what difference did it make where he was and what he was doing as long as she gave the money when she was asked for it. 

That doesn’t sound like anything in the Bogie/Bacall movie of the same name, does it? I recall Dark Passage as a flawed, gimmicky film, the only bad movie the couple made together, but this novel is quite another thing. Goodis writes a tightly plotted tale of Vincent Parry, serving time in San Quentin for the murder of his wife. He didn’t commit the crime, but he knows he can’t serve a life sentence, and when a chance to escape comes up, he takes it.

Soon Parry knocks out a man who was giving him a ride and started asking too many questions. A woman, Irene, finds him and knows who he is, but wants to help. She knows his case and always believed in his innocence. And she’s rich.

Parry is smart, tough when he needs to be, but unlike most crime novel protagonists, and certainly neither Bogart or any actor of the day would have been willing to play him as vulnerable and anxious as he is in the book. He’s constantly imagining the worst happening, fighting his instinct to bolt. Irene knows Parry, knows his fears and how to soothe them just enough, but he’s not going to draw her too far into this. Goodis surrounds Parry with interesting characters, like his sad, loyal, doomed friend Fellsinger, the crafty con man Arbogast, the plastic surgeon giving Parry a new face, and especially, Madge Rapf. Madge was Parry’s neighbor, and gave the most damning testimony against him, dying words from Parry’s wife concocted out of spite when Parry gave Madge up after a brief fling. 

Goodis ends each chapter with a wallop of a surprise, usually involving the appearance of a character who shouldn’t be where they are, and he does a fine job of tying the threads together plausibly. But what makes the book really resonate are passages like the one above, where the reader feels Parry’s unique way of assessing a situation even as his emotions almost get away from him. He’s a memorable character, driven to the edge of despair but resilient and cunning, caring and uncorrupted, and finding an uncommon match in Irene, a woman who knows who and what she wants and isn’t concerned what anyone thinks. A first rate crime novel.

(from the Library of America volume, David Goodis: Five Novels of the ’40s & ’50s)