Here Comes a Candle

It's been said that if you want to learn about the social issues and existential dilemmas of a culture, you read the crime fiction it's produced. Somehow learning about the worst possible action a person can commit and the way it can be the result of a network of influences can teach a reader how a person should and should not live their life. Frederic Brown's Here Comes a Candle (1950) not only reflects the potential horrors of living in post WWII urban society, but it does so in a shockingly contemporary manner. It is unflinchingly grotesque and readable.
Brown's protagonist, Joe Baily, is just trying to make his way through life in the city. He's making next-to-no cash, and none of it legitimately. A series of bizarre and upsetting childhood events have left him reeling with traumas with incalculable consequences. The terrors of the nuclear age leave Baily and his acquaintances uncertain of life's moral center. And yet, as a human with agency, what's a guy to do?
Possibly the most fascinating element of Here Comes a Candle is its structure. Scattered throughout the work are flashbacks which alter the medium of the text. We have a play, a radio drama, a scientific description of a videotaped dream, a sportscast, and a newspaper article. Each of these serves to illuminate both Joe's interior life and his past experiences. Though this framework is inventive, it never comes across as gimmicky. Here Comes a Candle was recently reissued by Centipede Press, but exhaustingly this release now appears to be OOP. One can only hope a different publisher puts it back out. Perhaps Valancourt, or Hard Case Crime?