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Noir Fiction For this second list, which deals with the writers and works that are now considered Noir Fiction, I rely heavily on Paul Duncan's Noir Fiction: Dark Highways, which I highly recommend as a starting point. In this book, Paul introduces the literary style of Noir Fiction as being both influential upon and influenced by Film Noir, often sharing common themes of hard-boiled detectives, double-crossing dames in a backdrop of corruption and ambiguity. The hard-boiled detective - a cold, detached character acting as judge, jury and executioner – first appeared in the Black Mask 'pulp' magazine in 1922 and has remained a popular crime fiction staple ever since. However, as an obvious influence, the term Noir Fiction (much like Film Noir) does not rely solely on hard-boiled detectives. Noir Fiction is applied to novels that are brooding, dark, cynical, complex and pessimistic, especially when involving crime. A theme that started in the hard-boiled detective and has continued through Noir Fiction and Film Noir is described by Charles Willeford in his 1964 Masters Thesis – The Immobilised Man – how many of the heroes in your favourite films or books share these characteristics? “The Immobilised hero, then, who is city-pent and agroraphobic, shares these characteristics: he 'writes' in the first person, he is antiscientific and antimaterialistic; he searches his own mind instead of going to the outside world for answers to his questions; he lives alone, counting and listing a small stock of possessions; he is a single man; he is likely to be an artist of sorts; his sense of humor is mordant, ironic, and often private; and he either loves or hates himself to the point of mental and physical pain.” So in starting our list, we should acknowledge the 3 writers most often associated with the beginning of Noir Fiction – Hammett, Chandler & Cain. Dashiell Hammett Red Harvest The Dain Curse The Maltese Falcon The Glass Key The Thin Man Continental Op
collection Raymond Chandler The Big Sleep Farewell, My Lovely The High Window The Lady in the
Lake The Little Sister The Long Goodbye Playback James M Cain The Postman Always
Rings Twice Serenade Mildred Pierce Double Indemnity The Embezzler Past All Dishonor The Butterfly The Moth Sinful Woman Jealous Woman The Root of His
Evil Galatea Mignon The Magician’s Wife Rainbow’s End The Institute The Baby In The
Icebox – short stories Cloud Nine The Enchanted Isle Other writers 1920-40s James Curtis They Drive By Night The Gilt Kid What Immortal Hand Look Upon A Monkey There Ain’t No Justice PJ Wolfson Bodies Are Dust All Women Die Is My Flesh of Brass? Summer Hotel Nathaniel West The Dream Life of
Balso Snell Miss Lonelyhearts A Cool Million The Day of the
Locust Horace McCoy They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? No Pockets In A Shroud I Should Have Stayed Home Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye Gerald Butler Kiss The Blood Off My Hands Slippery Hitch The Unafraid Steve Fisher I Wake Up Screaming No House Limit John Franklin Bardin The Deadly
Percheron The Last of Phillip
Banter Devil Take The
Blue-Tail Fly The Case Against
Myself The Burning Glass William Lindsay Gresham Nightmare Alley Limbo Tower Monster Midway Gerald Kersh Night and the City Prelude to a
Certain Midnight The Secret Masters Men Without Bones Cornell Woolrich (also wrote under the name William Irish) The Black Curtain The Leopard Man Phantom Lady Deadline At Dawn
(as William Irish) Black Angel The Black Path of
Fear I Wouldn’t Be In
Your Shoes Night Has A
Thousand Eyes I Married A Dead Man
(as William Irish) Nightmare Waltz into Darkness
(as William Irish) Rendezvous in Black Into the Night
(unfinished – completed by Lawrence Block) A prolific short story writer, many were produced as films including: The Mark of the
Whistler Cocaine He Looked Like
Murder Nightmare The Boy Who Cried
Murder It Had To Be Murder The Corpse Next
Door Short Story Collections Night and Fear Nightwebs Darkness At Dawn 1950s Jim Thompson Heed the Thunder
(aka Sins of the Father) Nothing More Than
Murder The Killer Inside
Me Recoil Savage Night Bad Boy The Criminal Roughneck The Nothing Man After Dark, My
Sweet The Kill-Off Wild Town The Getaway The Grifters Pop. 1280 David Karp One (aka Escape To
Nowhere) The Day of the
Monkey All Honorable Men Leave Me Alone The Last Believers David Goodis Dark Passage Nightfall Behold This Woman Of Missing Persons Street of the Lost The Burglar The Moon in the
Gutter Black Friday Street of No Return The Blond on the
Street Corner Down There Night Squad Patricia Highsmith Strangers on a
Train 1960-70s Charles Willeford High Priest of
California Pick-Up Cockfighter The Burnt Orange
Heresy The Shark-Infested
Custard Miami Blues New Hope for the
Dead Sideswipe The Way We Die Now Shane Stevens Go Down Dead Way Uptown in
Another World Dead City Rat Pack By Reason of
Insanity The Anvil Chorus George V Higgins The Friends of Eddie Coyle Wonderful Years, Wonderful Years Cogan’s Trade A City on the Hill Joe Gores Hammett Spade & Archer DKA Files novels –
not listed as more closely follow Police Procedural 1979-present Edward Bunker No Beast So Fierce The Animal Factory Little Boy Blue Dog Eat Dog Education of a
Felon Stark James Ellroy Brown’s Requiem Clandestine Killer on the Road
(orig. Silent Terror) Blood on the Moon Because the Night Suicide Hill The Black Dahlia The Big Nowhere LA Confidential White Jazz American Tabloid The Cold Six Thousand SHORT STORY
COLLECTIONS Dick Contino’s
Blues Hollywood Nocturnes Crime Wave Destination:
Morgue! Barry Gifford Wild at Heart Perdita Durango Sailor’s Holiday Sultan’s of Africa Consuelo’s Kiss Bad Day for the
Leopard Man Imagination of the
Heart James Sallis The Long-Legged Fly Moth Black Hornet Eye of the Cricket Bluebottle Ghost of a Flea Derek Raymond He Died With Eyes
Open The Devil’s Home on
Leave How the Dead Live I Was Dora Suarez Dead Man Upright Lawrence Block In the Midst of
Death Time to Murder and
Create A Stab in the Dark Eight Million Ways
To Die When the Sacred
Ginmill Closes Out on the Cutting
Edge A Ticket to the
Boneyard A Dance at the
Slaughterhouse A Walk Among the
Tombstones The Devil Knows You’re
Dead A Long Line of Dead
Men Even the Wicked Everybody Dies Hope to Die All the Flowers Are
Dying Brilliant as Lawrence Block’s Burglar series of novels are, they are probably as close to anti-noir fiction as you can get. If Noir Fiction is based on Raymond Chandler’s quote about Dashiell Hammett taking crime from Agatha Christie’s drawing room mysteries and putting it on the dark city streets where it belongs, Block puts it back there in the Burglar series, albeit in an updated New York setting. Worth mentioning ‘The Burglar in the Library’ whose plot involves a fictitious rare book signed by Raymond Chandler and presented to Dashiell Hammett. Police Procedurals Recommended Police Procedurals Ed McBain and his 87th Precinct Novels really set the standard for police procedurals to follow Real-life policeman turned writer Joseph Wanbaugh's LA based police novels Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo's novels of Swedish detective Martin Beck No doubt inspired by the Beck novels, there seems to be a growing sub-section of European authors, with a policeman as immobilised man in the hero role. Sjowall & Wahloo's Martin Beck set the mould for the brilliant detective, whose brilliance it seems comes at the cost of everything else – divorced after a largely loveless marriage, living alone, little contact with his children, poor relationships with his colleagues and few friends. Similarly Ian Rankin's John Rebus is recognised by his superiors as the best detective on the force, but deeply distrusted with his lack of respect for authority or any of his colleagues. A heavy drinker, divorced, living alone, his seems most comfortable at home with a carry-out and his records or in the type of pubs frequently mainly by criminals. Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander is again divorced with a difficult relationship with his daughter, complicated relationship with his father who derides his decision to ever join the police, lives alone drinking too much alcohol and eating too much junk food and is often angry and disillusioned with police-work and his colleagues. Finally, the latest and probably darkest entry is Arnaldur Indridason's dark, haunting mysteries featuring Icelandic detective Erlendur. Erlendur is more sensitive to his colleagues than the others, but he is emtionally damaged, a destructive relationship with his daughter and a haunting episode from his childhood make him an 'immobilised man'. Whereas the other detectives either express or are the vehicles for the sense of hopelessness around them, it is often Indridason's descriptions of the sparse Icelandic countryside giving a brooding, haunted quality to the mysteries. |
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