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Dayumn. Willeford was one subversive motherfucker in the '50s. Like his contemporaneous masterpiece The Woman Chaser , this is a dark novel with serious ambition and zero pretense toward the pulp thrills promised by its original marketing--or even its current marketing, deceptively packaged in the Library of America's 1950s crime-novel volume. But unlike The Woman Chaser, which was basically a very deranged comedy, Pick-Up is pure nihilism, a sustained howl of bleak, hopeless agony. Honestly, it's not for the faint of heart. But if you're willing to follow Willeford down the darkest alleys of the soul, there are ample rewards.

Another reviewer mentioned Leaving Las Vegas as a reference point, and that film occurred to me as well. But while the premise and tone is quite similar, I daresay Willeford went in a considerably ballsier direction with the narrative. The concept of suicide is introduced early enough in the book that it's not a spoiler to say that death plays a major role in this story of lovestruck, alcoholic depressives in '50s San Francisco. It's fair to say that the characters spend all their time either dead or wishing for death. Or drinking till they black out. Like I said, not for the faint of heart.

So why is this brutal stuff so compelling? Willeford treats depression with respect. There's not a trace of hysteria or melodrama here--nor, on the other end of the spectrum, is there a romanticization of the characters' self-destructive lifestyle (a crime of which some have accused Leaving Las Vegas, though I've never been sure I agree). The psychology, while simple, feels heartbreakingly authentic. Willeford writes with the cool, readable propulsion of a pulp master. And he builds up to an absolutely devastating final-page twist that, as the AV Club's Keith Phipps noted, changes everything and nothing about what comes before.

It's so weird to think that the Willeford who wrote this and The Woman Chaser went on to pen the near-geriatric Miami crime novels about Hoke Moseley in the '80s. I've read 3/4 of that series now, and they're perfectly fine as light cop thrillers go, centered on an everyman detective besieged by a midlife crisis. But they're so tame compared to this early subversive stuff. Funny parallel between this and the Hoke Moseley book Sideswipe, written 30 years later: both have characters who are "non-objective painters." Dude really likes that phrase.