Johnny Thompson is all in over femme fetale Anna Krebak, whose main interest in a man is the size of his bankroll. Johnny’s desire to win Anna’s love lures him into bad business with Slim Parsons, a hood with big ideas. Slim cooks up the perfect scheme to knock over an armored car full of payroll cash with Johnny behind the wheel.

With a title like Criss-Cross, you know they’ll be plenty of overlapping double-crosses, and you won’t be disappointed. A tour de force of noir magic. Filmed in 1949 with Burt Lancaster and Yvonne De Carlo, with direction by Robert Siodmak.

One caution: both Round Trip and Criss-Cross include the original jazz-age era racial slurs.

Round Trip/Criss-Cross is Staccato Crime SC-003 coming soon from Stark House Press.

Kudos to the Stark House Press imprint Staccato Crime, Greg Shepard, Jeff Vorzimmer, and David Rachels for bringing back the novel Round Trip by Don Tracy, first published in 1934. Eddie Magruder is a borderline criminal with a rough, suspicious demeanor. His path could have easily pulled a hefty term in prison, but he meets a reporter at the newspaper where he works as a photographer, and is shown a better life, a better version of himself.

The plot dances close to the edge of crime, but the story is all about its characters. Tracy’s prose is simple, but loaded with nuance and detail. It captivates and pulls you along like an action-packed thriller, only the action here is more subtle—at times almost mundane. But somehow it’s magic and impossible to put down, because you want to know what’s next in this unpredictable, first person narrative about the lives of a cast of characters as real as vivid imagination gets.

David Rachels’ well-researched introduction provides a welcome glimpse into Tracy’s life, success, and renown.

Next up: Criss-Cross, the second half of this two-fer.

Round Trip/Criss-Cross is Staccato Crime SC-003 coming soon from Stark House Press.