Hard Rain Falling: Don Carpenter - Softcover

Carpenter, Don

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0241766931 ISBN 13: 9780241766934

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2025

Synopsis

A cult hardboiled noir classic of crime, punishment and the search for a meaningful life, with an Introduction by Stuart Evers

‘Tough and vital … Hard Rain Falling roars through dim Western streets like an articulate Hells Angel looking for a fight’ The New York Times

When small-time teenage criminal Jack Levitt becomes friends with Billy Lancing, a young Black pool hustler, neither imagines they will meet again years later in St Quentin Prison – or that only one of them will make it out. But what does freedom really mean if you can’t escape the hand life has always dealt you? Don Carpenter’s shocking, poignant novel is a story of crime, punishment and trying to make sense of it all; of being down, but never quite out.

‘Explosive … Tarmac-tough dialogue and road-novel delinquent action is customised with a tender intensity … Carpenter brings gold to the grit’ Boyd Tonkin, Independent

‘A unique read; violent, tender, inexorable, and melancholic … The small lives contained herein are indelible’ Richard Price

About this title

About the Author

Don Carpenter (1931-1995) was an American writer, best known as the author of Hard Rain Falling, which the Independent described as ‘bring[ing] gold to grit’. He wrote numerous novels, novellas, short stories and screenplays over the course of a 22-year career. Facing a mounting series of debilitating illnesses, Carpenter committed suicide in 1995.

From the Back Cover

Jack Levitt – teenaged orphan and small-time criminal – lives off his wits, dividing his time between the pool halls, bars and brothels of Portland, Oregon. Billy Lancing is a young black runaway and pool hustler who falls into Jack’s orbit. After a messed-up heist lands Jack at reform school, he re-enters a world where Billy has struggled to find peace in a new middle-class life with marriage, fatherhood and a steady job. But neither man can outrun trouble for long, and they soon meet again in St Quentin

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0241766931
• ISBN 13: 9780241766934
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368