I don't follow boxing, but I like reading about it. There is an inherent drama in sports, especially in boxing, that is difficult to resist. Two opponents engaged in a struggle against each other with no one to aid them, nothing but themselves to rely on. Boxing used to be something everyone in American followed, at least a little bit. At one time it was impossible to avoid. It's still a popular sport, but not like it was in the 1940's when newspapers featured daily boxing columns in their sports pages.

The Distance is a noir novel, not quite a mystery, but its noir is built on nostalgia. Throughout the book there is a longing for the old days, when there was a local boxing scene, when San Francisco had seven daily papers, when it was possible for someone with just a high school diploma and enough gumption to earn a daily column in the sports pages. Billy Nichols, the narrator of The Distance, writes a daily boxing column for the San Francisco Inquirer circa 1948. The regional boxing scene is on its last legs, about to be done in by television and it's national coverage.

Late one night Billy Nichols gets a call from boxer Hank Escanlante. Escalante, a decent fighter and a good guy, has gotten into an argument with his manager Gig Liardi. The argument ended with a single punch that dropped Liardi against a table killing him. Nichols believes Escalante is innocent of murder so he helps the fighter dispose of Liardi's body. Afterwards, Nichols returns to his job at the paper and his troubled marriage while Escalante continues his struggle to get a shot at a decent fight, one that will give him a career that can support his wife and children. Of course the body is discovered, the police become involved, things turn out to be much more complicated than Nichols believed they were. Drama ensues.

It's difficult to assign The Distance a genre. It was marketed as a detective fiction, even won several awards in this category, but there is no detective in the novel. The narrator is involved in a crime but he doesn't solve it. In fact, his goal is to find a way to get away with it. The Distance is set in the world of boxing, but there is too little actual boxing to call the book a sports novel. Only one fight is described in detail, and the day to day reality of boxing plays only a small part compared to the fiction of F.X. Toole who wrote "Million Dollar Baby." The Distance is close to being a newspaper novel, but again the hero spends too little time at the paper. The historical time and setting figure strongly in the novel, enough to call it historical fiction, but I'm not sure the late 1940's is historical enough to fit into this genre. But whatever it is, The Distance is a fine read. One that I enjoyed. There is a second Billy Nichols book called Shadow Boxer that I'll have to add to my TBR stack. ( )

No one knows noir like Eddie Muller; he knows all the tricks in the book—and he should; after all, he wrote the book, Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir, perhaps the single greatest writing ever done on the subject; itself a work of creative inspiration, Dark City serves as both an effective catalog of film noir and also a vivid and lively expression of the form. Muller has done much to help preserve the movies he writes about with unmatched zeal, literally preserving films as President and Founder of the Film Noir Foundation, which also sponsors the popular Noir City Film Festival in San Francisco every January.
His first novel, The Distance (2002), is retro noir all the way, from the moment Billy Nichols' world is altered on page one, when he is quickly pulled into a hole that grinds deeper and deeper. More tribute than thievery, Muller has carved out a unique voice of his own despite many obvious nods to noir's rich history, particularly the crime novels of Raymond Chandler, from which many motifs are lovingly borrowed, but The Distance does more justice to Chandler's legacy than many of the films that directly adapted his work.
Muller beautifully recreates San Francisco 1948, itself the ultimate noir landscape. Fast-paced and unrelentingly tense, The Distance is propelled by the various and sundry crooks, thugs, and pugs that populate the city's gritty, smoke-filled boxing clubs and shadowy back alleys. Placing the narration in the hands of an articulate "Mr. Boxing" Billy Nichols, a San Francisco "Inquirer" (it's the freakin' Examiner, the Hearst-owned daily) columnist, proves a clever device, as Nichols' guides his readers through the murky underworld with craft and clarity. Despite the fact that Nichols doesn't drive, he takes us from one end of The City to the other; on streetcars, cop cars, and taxis, we travel with him from "seedy" North Beach to the "Irish" Mission, from the Civic Center to Cow Palace—there's even a body disposed of in the far reaches of Golden Gate Park, out by Ocean Beach, so some of you may even be suspects.

I suppose there's no other way to write a book of this era than by featuring the tough-talking, tender-hearted wise guy hero, and his entourage of types. It took me a couple of chapters to let go of my mild distaste for all that, but then I was able to really enjoy the rest.

The story and the crime at the center revolve around some memorable characters. Their backstory, motivation, emotions, and the decisions they make are not only wrenching, they are interesting and not always conventional. I think that's what saved the book for me - you think you know exactly what's going to happen, like in every good 40s movie, and then it all tilts in a new direction.

I'm especially appreciative that EM managed to do the heroine justice. By setting her up in the usual package (gorgeous, tough dame in high heels and a wicked voice) he made his job harder, but came through with tenderness.

Not sure I'm up for more noir, but this was well worth it. ( )

I'm always dubious of writers who attempt the hard boiled style of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett or James M. Cain. The work either becomes a terrible pastiche or an unintended parody. There are, though, a few writers who can take the hard boiled style, add their own voice and make something compelling and believable with it. Eddie Muller manages this nearly impossible task superbly.

Set in post WWII San Francisco, Billy Nichols is an ace sports columnist specializing in boxing. When he helps a fading pug out of a jam he finds himself in a complicated series of twists and turns, each of which takes him farther and farther afield. His disintegrating marriage is not helped by the pug's gorgeous wife, a dame with a dark past of her own.
The novel is well paced, the characters believable and on the sympathetic side and the period details are spot on. As much a mystery as a boxing novel, The Distance proves Muller is in there for the long count.