Hard Rain Falling

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 Prison, trying to make sense of the hand life has dealt them. Only one will make it out of St Quentin – but what is the use of freedom, if all of life is in chains?

A Dostoevskyian noir in the hard-boiled tradition, Hard Rain Falling is also a shocking, tender novel about looking for meaning somewhere between the seedy and the sublime.

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 TimesWhen 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

• | Author: Don Carpenter
• | Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
• | Publication Date: Sep 04, 2025
• | Number of Pages:
• | Language:
• | Binding: Paperback / softback
• | ISBN-13: 9780241766934
• | ISBN-10: 0241766931