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duparker's review
4.0
Bleak and effecting. This book was enjoyable and shows how off kilter thrillers can be.
dantastic's review
4.0
After a career at sea, Swede Nelson comes ashore with the thought of buying a farm in Minnesota and finding a nice girl to marry. It's a shame he runs into the widow Corliss Mason, the owner of the Purple Parrot, and her web of sex, lies, and murder...
Home is the Sailor, much like fellow Hard Case entry The Vengeful Virgin, is straight out of the James M. Cain playbook. You know the plot: a guy falls for a hot young woman and commits murder for her, then starts cracking under the pressure once he realizes she's bad news.
When Corliss comes to Swede the night before their wedding saying she's been raped, who wouldn't do what Swede did? Swede's drunken binges are believable, all things considered. The big reveal near the end was a little obvious but getting there was still one hell of a ride. When the cops start nosing around and Swede begins figuring out what Corliss is really up to, tension mounts and the story kicks into high gear.
So why didn't I give it a five? I found it a little unbelievable that Swede fell so hard for Corliss so fast. As I said before, the big reveal is telegraphed slightly.
If you're a Hard Case fan, this is one of the must-haves.
Home is the Sailor, much like fellow Hard Case entry The Vengeful Virgin, is straight out of the James M. Cain playbook. You know the plot: a guy falls for a hot young woman and commits murder for her, then starts cracking under the pressure once he realizes she's bad news.
When Corliss comes to Swede the night before their wedding saying she's been raped, who wouldn't do what Swede did? Swede's drunken binges are believable, all things considered. The big reveal near the end was a little obvious but getting there was still one hell of a ride. When the cops start nosing around and Swede begins figuring out what Corliss is really up to, tension mounts and the story kicks into high gear.
So why didn't I give it a five? I found it a little unbelievable that Swede fell so hard for Corliss so fast. As I said before, the big reveal is telegraphed slightly.
If you're a Hard Case fan, this is one of the must-haves.
twilliamson's review
3.0
Day Keene's Home Is the Sailor, first published in 1951, is as condensed a take on pulpy noir as anyone's likely to find. It combines just about everything the genre uses as its standard: a ham-fisted, tough-jawed protagonist runs across a hot dame who isn't anything like she portrays herself to be, and winds up having to slug his way through trouble as the persistently wronged underdog.
Keene's prose is pretty snappy, if overly reliant on sentence fragments for rhythm, and his dialogue is a little bland, but his euphemisms are pretty strong, and his plot is pretty tightly packed. There's just no wasted space in a novel like this; it's meant to be consumed in a handful of hours and discarded just as easily, but that doesn't mean it's at all a real waste of time.
What keeps this one back from true greatness is that it just doesn't feel as transgressive or as subversive as other novels in the HCC lineup. Keene's noir-style chops are pretty solid, but that's all he really offers here. There's no real chewy sexual politics or philosophical nuance to his ham-fisted rowdiness, and as a result I think the overt sexism of the novel doesn't age well; I found myself hating the protagonist of the story more and more as the book continued, and I'm not entirely certain that was really Keene's point. In a tale that does intend to blur the lines between what is good and what is bad--ostensibly what "noir" fiction often aims to accomplish--I think it's a little regrettable that Swede makes out in the end like a hero as opposed to the highly problematic figure he really is.
But that, in a line, is what a lot of these 1950s potboilers really are: a snapshot of the many ideological problems behind cultural reproduction of masculinity in a post-WWII world. This is a fascinating text not for its subversiveness, but for the way it seems to reiterate a trend in more conventional or even conservative imaginations of masculinity and femininity after a period of tremendous horror.
For what it's worth, I think the book's pretty damn good, even if I resolutely think it's not something everyone will enjoy. I think it's very much a product of its times, and reflecting on what those times were and what this book says about popular media consumption at that time may well be a worthy endeavor.
Keene's prose is pretty snappy, if overly reliant on sentence fragments for rhythm, and his dialogue is a little bland, but his euphemisms are pretty strong, and his plot is pretty tightly packed. There's just no wasted space in a novel like this; it's meant to be consumed in a handful of hours and discarded just as easily, but that doesn't mean it's at all a real waste of time.
What keeps this one back from true greatness is that it just doesn't feel as transgressive or as subversive as other novels in the HCC lineup. Keene's noir-style chops are pretty solid, but that's all he really offers here. There's no real chewy sexual politics or philosophical nuance to his ham-fisted rowdiness, and as a result I think the overt sexism of the novel doesn't age well; I found myself hating the protagonist of the story more and more as the book continued, and I'm not entirely certain that was really Keene's point. In a tale that does intend to blur the lines between what is good and what is bad--ostensibly what "noir" fiction often aims to accomplish--I think it's a little regrettable that Swede makes out in the end like a hero as opposed to the highly problematic figure he really is.
But that, in a line, is what a lot of these 1950s potboilers really are: a snapshot of the many ideological problems behind cultural reproduction of masculinity in a post-WWII world. This is a fascinating text not for its subversiveness, but for the way it seems to reiterate a trend in more conventional or even conservative imaginations of masculinity and femininity after a period of tremendous horror.
For what it's worth, I think the book's pretty damn good, even if I resolutely think it's not something everyone will enjoy. I think it's very much a product of its times, and reflecting on what those times were and what this book says about popular media consumption at that time may well be a worthy endeavor.
daniel_wood's review
adventurous
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Alcoholism and Rape
jakewritesbooks's review
4.0
Christa Faust is one of my favorite writers and I came to her work via Hard Case Crime. In an interview with her, I read that she got started on crime fiction by reading Day Keene. I wasn’t too familiar with Keene but I knew I had his Home Is The Sailor book in my HCC collection. It was low on my priority list but it shot up after the interview and now, I figured it was time to get to it.
It’s your typical pulp fare in the style of James Cain: boy meets girl under auspicious circumstances, money is involved, nothing is what it seems, sex, alcohol, violence, etc. It’s a genre I like but don’t love. I’m more of a mystery fan in the crime genre and pulpish noir has usually been adjacent to this but most HCC books are noirs and most are pretty good.
This one is no exception. Keene is a solid writer. Even though I could anticipate twists and turns, he builds the suspense well. It’s eminently readable and yet it holds the reader too. In other words, the tricks it relies on to keep the plot moving do not feel cheap. I don’t know if this was Keene’s first book or not (I don’t even know if that’s his real name) but I do know that he has his style down pat. The dialogue works, so do the scenes and characters, right up to the noir end.
The book won’t send me out scrambling for more Day Keenes but I won’t say no to one if I cross its path. All in all, this is another winner for Hard Case Crime.
It’s your typical pulp fare in the style of James Cain: boy meets girl under auspicious circumstances, money is involved, nothing is what it seems, sex, alcohol, violence, etc. It’s a genre I like but don’t love. I’m more of a mystery fan in the crime genre and pulpish noir has usually been adjacent to this but most HCC books are noirs and most are pretty good.
This one is no exception. Keene is a solid writer. Even though I could anticipate twists and turns, he builds the suspense well. It’s eminently readable and yet it holds the reader too. In other words, the tricks it relies on to keep the plot moving do not feel cheap. I don’t know if this was Keene’s first book or not (I don’t even know if that’s his real name) but I do know that he has his style down pat. The dialogue works, so do the scenes and characters, right up to the noir end.
The book won’t send me out scrambling for more Day Keenes but I won’t say no to one if I cross its path. All in all, this is another winner for Hard Case Crime.
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