The improbably named Woody Haut’s follow-up to the critically acclaimed Pulp Culture is a largely successful attempt to bring the story of American crime writing up-to-date. Haut takes Vietnam as his turning point, arguing that all that precedes - his first book - is pulp, while all that follows - from the early Sixties; from the Kennedy assassination on - is what he defines as neon noir. That is, American crime fiction that is essentially politicised. If the book has a thesis then it is that Kennedy, Vietnam, Watergate, Reagan, The Cold War and the rest reshaped crime writing and crime writers in its own image. It’s a good debate, well argued, but as to whether or not the book sustains it is another matter.

Blind prejudice is always a thing of beauty in such circumstances, and there is plenty enough in these pages. Haut is scrupulous in making sure we understand from the off that the choice of writers quoted "reflect the author’s personal tastes". It allows him to drag in those one might not automatically associate - Robert Stone, Michael Herr - and to miss out on one of the best, most literary writers the genre has ever produced, Barry Gifford. Personal values are one thing, but as an exemplar of the form, Gifford’s failure to even rate a mention is inexplicable. Still, that said, Haut’s willingness to express an opinion is what elevates Neon Noir above just another trawl through the names. And just as well, as he eventually abandons his rather unwieldy Nam theory and simply takes books on their own merits. For example, he marginalises long-time queen of feminist crime, Sarah Paretsky, for failing "to measure up to her high-profile packaging and presence" and for her "overly neat narratives." And he is quite right - for all her importance as a woman writing in a predominantly male genre, Paretsky is, simply, not very good. Unfortunately, given the obvious gender disparity, Haut merely suggests that "contemporary crime fiction, regardless of how one interprets the politics of voyeurism, has been to some extent a reaction to feminism, and a refuge for marginalised male writers." Quite where this leaves the British genre, dominated as it is by Ruth Rendell and P.D. James, is anyone’s guess.

Or indeed Patricia Cornwall. The beautifully written, rather fantastical novels of Thomas Harris come in for Haut’s particular scorn towards the end, while Cornwall - not just a bad writer but a bad, reactionary writer - is all but ignored.

Anything Haut (one suspects, unjustly) lards upon Harris surely applies two-fold to the ghastly Cornwall. Instead she is let off for simply lacking "abandonment, wit and style," while Harris is all but accused of encouraging "the popularity of capital punishment, get-tough legislation, and false moral positions that coincidentally encourage racism, misogyny and homophobia." Well that’s okay then.

This is a very good book, but one only has to read on page 144 that James Ellroy is "the quintessential neon noir writer" for the heart to sink. Ellroy is good, but he comes with too much baggage - too much Devil Doggery, unashamed reactionary tub-thumping - to let us love him like we do Elmore Leonard. Haut even goes so far as to argue that, although Ellroy professes a ring-wing agenda, his writing really belongs to the left. Having your cake and eating it too.

But even if we go so far as to accept the Second Coming of Jimmy Ellroy, no one is surely about to argue that he is a better writer than Barry Gifford or Jim Sallis. It feels as though, in discussing Sallis (with no little praise in his pen), Haut is too busily shoehorning him back into genre even as Sallis reaches out for the more expansive grounds of literary fiction. He’s a literary writer who happens to be published and promoted as crime - he’ll be the first to admit that. Haut seems surprised that Sallis is able to weave the spell of his Lew Griffin novels with "skill and subtly". It’s a shame too that he takes it upon himself merely to discuss the work in terms of detective fiction, leaving no breathing space for Sallis’ brilliant 1997 post-espionage novel, Death Will Have Your Eyes. Again, we have to discuss Haut’s book in terms of what is missing as much as what is present. Flawed but provocatively readable.

At one point Haut asserts that when the celebrated Walter Mosley first visited the UK on promotional duties, he denied the late Chester Himes as an influence. Which is odd - and not just because of the obvious (and crass) realisation that both are ostensibly black crime writers. After all, much of Himes’ sparkling 1945 gem If He Hollers Let Him Go revolves, as does Mosley’s Devil In A Blue Dress, around a black woman whose skin is all but light enough to pass for white. And the similarities don’t stop there - not least the Los Angeles location - but the difference, the big difference, is surely that, whatever its reputation, Himes’ book has little to do with actual crime writing.

There is no mystery and no detection to the book, now splendidly reissued by Serpent’s Tail. If there’s a crime then it’s not murder but injustice and prejudice. The book is a remarkable portrait of a city’s racial divide towards the tail end of the war. Bob Jones is a black leaderman building Navy frigates. It’s a protected job and Bob Jones is glad of that. Here is a man that not only doesn’t want to fight but has grown fat on back-home pickings.

But for all he has money and he has the light-skinned Alice - the daughter of a well-to-do black doctor - he doesn’t have a position. Bob Jones is fighting his own war against unguarded abuse, against a white society that recognises but hasn’t equalised his standing. Where a "cracker bitch" on a ship crew can call him a nigger and he’ll be the one demoted for answering back. Where restaurants will attach a note to his bill telling him never to return. Where passers-by will glance in a car to see who’s inside, then stare when they realise it’s a black man.

If He Hollers is a harsh, angry, complex book. While we feel for Bob’s treatment, we are caught in the backdraft of his own, often irrational fury. He wants those around him to feel "as scared and powerless and unprotected as I felt every goddamned morning I woke up." Provocation has turned Bob against himself, seething and lashing out at "peckerwood" whites and perceived Uncle Toms like Alice’s father. We realise that, for all the novel is set in a city, the dynamics are those of a prison novel.

In the end, If He Hollers reminds us not so much of Mosley but of the bleak, gutter-level addresses of Himes’ contemporary, the troubled and disturbing David Goodis. Resonant, questioning and absolutely contemporary (it’s near impossible to imagine text this vibrant is 50 years young), the high-cost gravity of Himes’ debut renders it no less important a book now than it ever was.