It is too early to be sure, but perhaps a new school in the American novel is in the making. The Los Angeles school, it might be called, for its two principals, James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler, are residents of Los Angeles County. And it is against the background of Southern California that they both have set their tautly-wound, sense-shocking novels. The theme that runs throughout their work is common to both men: the tough people of this twentieth century world, the people with the inteness desire for possession, the ones who murder for money and kill for love, are the much-drooled-over "little people," the men and women who sell insurance and wait on tables. They are tough, and completely amoral, possessing an intentness and a capacity for brutality of which even the gangster is hardly capable. (In a Chandler or Cain story, the gangster is always sophisticated and generally weak.) Right now these men "constitute the ragged edge of literature," as Scott Fitzgerald said of Oscar Wilde, but at least they'll bear watching.

Their black-and-white style is peculiarly fitted for motion pictures. Cain's "Mildred Pierce" and "Double Indemnity" and Chandler's "Farewell My Lovely" (filmed under the title "Murder, My Sweet") were made into pictures of real power. Chandler's latest is "The Blue Dahlia," a story of three discharged Navy fliers just back in L.A. from the South Pacific. One of them, played by Hugh Beaumont, is the straight man; there's nothing wrong with him. William Bendix, who has never turned in a bum performance, does a beautiful job as the ex-gunner who has a steel plate in his head and isn't taking any lip from anyone. The big boy is Johnny, played by Alan Ladd. His wife hadn't bothered to send him a "Dear John" letter, so he doesn't know that she's been playing around with a night club operator in his absence. When he does find out, he leaves her, but when she is murdered, he decides to play stoop-tag with the police and get the guy who did it all by himself. This decision gets him involved with several nasty characters and results in his getting sapped, kicked, and shot at all within the space of twenty-four hours.

The film is untypical of Chandler in that it has a formula happy ending, but even this does not take the edge off of several very swell performances, particularly by the minor players. To cite chapter and verse, Howard Da Silva as the night club operator, and Will Wright as the house detective, do exceptionally sensitive jobs in roles that could easily have been stereotypes.