One thing’s for sure: “Love Story, with Cocaine” (2011), a 29-page fiction by Tom Bissell, is not a sex story. Ken, a jobless “writer,” does not even kiss Maarit, though she wants him to. Though Ken is American, both persons are living in Estonia—and have one thing in common.

Maarit asks Ken what he does for a living. Preparing cocaine, Ken replies, “Right now, you’re kinda looking at it.” He’s a user and so is Maarit. In Ken, physical intimacy is no match for coke. This is not quite the case with Maarit. Both are debauched, even so, because Ken will visit prostitutes and Maarit is sexually promiscuous. There are no normal, traditional pursuits here. Much has been, or is being, consumed away. . . We’ve seen these characters before; it’s nice to read Bissell’s exploration of them. “LSWC” (from the book Creative Types) is a frank, not-dull winner.

With Monsieur Verdoux (1947), Charles Chaplin tried to write a comedy, or at least a comic tragedy (which I distinguish from a tragicomedy). The humor and the dark elements of the film do not gel, however, and that is just the beginning of its problems. To support his crippled wife and young son, Henri Verdoux (Chaplin), a laid-off bank clerk, marries and murders, for their money, middled-aged women. Granted, the movie is thought-provoking, but contains no sympathy for the women—and one man—Verdoux kills. Just as bad, and tasteless, near the end it attempts to give the serial murderer the high moral ground in a wicked world. The attempt is unsuccessful. Really, Verdoux is remarkably foolish, a failed comic tragedy. Moreover, unlike co-stars Martha Raye and Isobel Elsom, who are credible, Chaplin is monotonous in his performance.

In Trap, by M.Night Shyamalan, a psychopathic killer/family man does everything he can to escape the trap orchestrated for him by multiple police. With a certain guilelessness (except for Josh Hartnett) the cast is largely appealing. Hartnett succeeds as the killer; Alison Pill is unerring as his wife. But the film doesn’t come off. Shyamalan is no writer. There is in Trap, as Ross Douthat indicates, a “ludicrous but memorable setup.” It is ludicrous, though.