Kevin Johnson. The Dark Page: Books That Inspired American Film Noir, 1940-1949

Kevin Johnson. The Dark Page: Books that Inspired American Film Noir, 1940-1949. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2007. 384 pp. US $95.00 ISBN 9781584562177 When this volume arrived in my mailbox, my immediate reaction was: wow! A giant coffee-table book on a topic that desperately needs documentation and commentary, addressing an area of film history that exerts an ever-greater appeal as the years go by and a subject I myself am very interested in, and, in addition, containing 162 page-sized colour photographs of first editions of the books themselves, most with original dust-jackets. After a thorough perusal of the book, however, my enthusiasm is somewhat less wholehearted.