Ride the Pink Horse

Hughes gave us both Ride The Pink Horse and In A Lonely Place and both novels were made into terrific movies. I read this book many years ago and I’m glad to report that it holds up extremely well. One tough guy writer who happened to be a woman gave us one tough guy fellow on a journey through darkness.

It's good, though not as good as THE FALLEN SPARROW or THE SO BLUE MARBLE, Hughes' two masterpieces. It is sometimes supposed that she took the "back story" of RIDE THE PINK HORSE from Willard Motley's famous novel KNOCK ON ANY DOOR, for both books feature a pair of slum boys, one of whom grows up to be a hood, the other a top cop. However if anything the shoe is on the other foot as PINK HORSE was published earlier than KNOCK--though it is true that KNOCK was written first. A memorable film was made of this novel, with Robert Montgomery in his noir outfit, and the lovely, mysterious Wanda Hendrix dyeing her hair to try to look Latina. She doesn't look Mexican but she looks utterly fantastic. And Thomas Gomez, surprise, a real Mexican to play a Mexican, an utterly unique casting call for Hollywood back in the day. Gomez was even nominated for the Oscar. For some reason the film isn't available on DVD, indeed was it ever even on video? However we have the book in this splendid Canongate edition. Like Patrick Quentin's PUZZLE FOR PILGRIMS, it shows us Latin America through the slatted blinds of noir bleakness. Hughes wrote one more splendid novel, IN A LONELY PLACE, and then several other lesser books. There was even a re-make of PIONK HORSE in the early 1960s, one of the very first TV movies, by Don Siegel who had also made THE KILLERS for TV. This telefilm too has not been released on video. THE HANGED MAN (with Robert Culp and Vera Miles) took the events of RIDE THE PINK HORSE and transported them to New Orleans, and threw in the Mardi Gras parade for good measure, even filming a bit of Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto making winderful music together. How about a two sided DVD release of RIDE THE PINK HORSE and THE HANGED MAN?

Anyone who thinks only men write hardboiled fiction--and great hardboiled fiction, at that--is in for a shock with this novel. Dorothy Hughes, the author, has to be classed as one of the best of the breed, based on this novel alone--although two of her other works, The Fallen Sparrow and In a Lonely Place, were also made into film noirs.The real pleasure here is the crackling dialogue that lashes back and forth between Sailor (basis for Barry Gifford's character's name in Wild at Heart?), a down at the heels drifter, and the Sen--short for Senator Willis Douglass, a corrupt sleaze who had his wife killed so he could be with his floozy of a mistress. Both meet up in Mexico where Sailor has tracked the Sen to get the rest of the dough Douglass promised him for keeping his mouth shut about what happened. But also there is Mac, a Chicago cop hot on the trail of one or maybe both of the two men. If you want a strong, gripping read that creates a tense world dripping with 40s atmosphere, look no further. Noir fiends, like me, should rejoice that Canongate Crime has reissued this title in a very nice trade paperback. Just the ticket for the holidays!